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- Average user rating: stars out of 32 votes Back to product review
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User reviews
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17 out of 19 people found this review helpful
3 stars
Version: Aston 1.9.2
"Pretty good, but be careful during uninstall."
Pros: Aston has a very nice and customizable shell interface. It has a nice, sleek, bluish look. What I loved most about this program was that it didn't overhaul your entire system. It installs in about 5 seconds, and then when opened, you have a choice, Aston, or Explorer shells. I setup Aston to always give me a choice between explorer and Aston at startup. That's a big plus. No system overhaul and a choice between default and Aston.
Cons: Like I said above, I told Aston to give me a choice between their shell, and the default shell at startup. Normally, that would be a good thing, but after uninstalling Aston, the next morning, I went to boot up, and explorer wouldn't load. I received no error messages, or anything like that, it just wouldn't appear. All that was there was my desktop wallpaper. Fortunately, I had the installer of Aston on my USB Pen Drive, so I plugged it in, and ran the installer through task manager.
After Reinstalling Aston, (Which I uninstalled the day I got it, so my 30 day trial wasn't up,) I pressed the famous Ctrl Alt Del buttons and opened task manager. I was able to open My Documents and from there, navigate to the desktop and run Aston. I logged back on via the Aston Shell, and reconfigured Aston to not run at startup and to revert back to explorer. I exited Aston, and attempted to re-run explorer. This time, it worked! Explorer loaded successfully and I uninstalled Aston. I restarted to make sure the problem wouldn't persist and Aston is now 100% off of my PC and Explorer is back to normal. A little advice: Never install any shell pack, (Whether it be Aston, Vista Inspirat, Flyakite OSX, VTP, etc.) unless you know what you're doing. If a problem occurs, and you don't know how to fix it, then you can run into some major issues. Fortunately for me, this problem was minor.
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4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
3 stars
Version: Aston 1.9.2
"Its a weaker version of other customization programs"
Pros: Combines alot of different customization aspects into a single package.
Cons: Even though its many in one, its quality seems to be lacking somewhat. There are other programs out there that allow you to do most of the same things, like windowblinds and whatnot, that dont lose settings.
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
5 stars
Version: Aston 1.9.1
"I like how it starts with a fancy wallpaper and space age buttons instead ..."
Pros: You can make a button to go to the desktop, I
believe hint is desktop, and type of file is desktop, and you leave the others blank. As it does not start to desktop, everything is organised, it just takes the stress out. Also their other program (altdesk) allows you to do 3 different things on the PC, they use paypal, but be patient as u get the reg. in a couple of days. Essential if you use the PC alot. Some of the themes have clocks and CPU usage. See also rainmeter and rainlender, which work well with this, but do smaller things and are free. I cannot imagine being on the PC without this. Their competition is windowblinds which uses more CPU power, whereas this makes the CPU faster. Also windowblinds starts drom your desktop i.e scattered files and program shortcuts, but I like the idea of starting clean, with just a few fancy buttons. It is easy to edit the buttons and themes are saved when U change to another theme. Their
is also a forum on their site, which is active.
Cons: Some themes do not change the folders look, but that is it, usually system folders are all designed to go with the theme, which are all free.
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4 stars
Version: Aston 1.9.1
"It's basic yet technical, it's useful yet pointless.."
Pros: I see no point in these jazzy themes and shells you need to improvise your computer and make it something it's not. But with AstonShell I believed it was different, and what do they say?
Seeing is believing. And it worked.
The themes are free, the registration is cheap and cost effective and there a vast amounts of slick, modern and sexy themes to make your computer something you never dreamed it could be.
The fact is, many other Shell replacers and theme wizards and managers like ThemeXP, ObjectDock 1.1 and the lot. They use around about 11MB, this uses around about 10. Not alot of different but the average Windows uses 30MB. Yes, 30.
It works. Trust me.
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1 out of 3 people found this review helpful
2 stars
Version: Aston 1.9.1
"Trial period expired after 3 hours- Bad sign of upfront problems with this!"
Pros: I could not use the program. 30 day trial security modual has a problem and expired within 3 hours after intsalling. Read on the web site forum that this is happening to alot of people. They claim that it is being worked on but as of today has not been fixed. Makes you feel like your being forced to buy the program just to get it to work and then I read that some folks were not getting there unlock code number in a timely manner. I dont know about you but when I buy something I want my key within the hour if not a few minutes.
Cons: Anyone who wants to sell a product, should have all the kinks and delays of buying a program, worked out so that the consumer dont have to get there panties in a wad. I dont know why these folks dont care that their potential buyers are having a problem right up front. This is a serious problem from a marketing point of view. If you cant fix this problem for your customers, Then you need to stop all marketing of the product until you do. This ******** about e-mailing someone and waiting for who knows how long for who knows who, will get back to you with who knows what is any solution. It is not my job to figure out why your promise of a 30 day free trial expires after 3 hours (for me)then does not work and leaves you with frustration and anger. My job is not to e-mail you and ask you why I have not gotten my code yet. My job is not to research your forums to find out why why why. It is your job and this is why you make the money any we pay for the program. The answer I got on there web site about the 30 day free trial expiring after and hour or so and got an answer simular to this: Please do not change the time or date on your computer during the trial period. Ok, Now what. I did not change the time or date and now I can not use the program until I pay for it even if you reinstall it. Bottom line:
I have this supposed 30 day trial program on my machine that expired in 1 hour. Now I cant use the program and reinstalling it did not change that fact. There is no sulution on the web site for this. Now, do I buy it after finding out that the false advertising of a 30 free trial is the first impression of this company and there is no solution to fix it? Or, do I write it off as onother software company that dont have their **** together and thinks we should all suffer for it if, we want the program anyway? Personally I wouldnt touch it until they actually give a 30 day free trial as stated on the web site. Until then They can kiss my ass. I'm tired of doing programers research for them when they make the money.
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