In your Products area you have a helpful chart comparing Nexus free and Ultimate versions, showing what features are available in Ultimate/lacking in free. That makes the decision-making process very clear. For me, it's a no-brainer: Ultimate offers enough additional features that I want/need that it's well worth the price.

Now here's the rub: I'm still up in the air over whether or not to go the next step to Xtreme. (I know...you'd simply say, "Go for it.") Money is tight for me and my family right now, so I need to carefully scrutinze every penny. If the additional features of Xtreme were something I'd use regularly, I'd bite the bullet and drop the few extra bucks. But I can't afford to pay for anything I won't use.

So here's the bottom line. Is there a comparison chart I'm missing or can you clearly spell out for me the additional features of Xtreme over Ultimate? Thanks in advance!

I think I really need to add a comprehensive comparison chart to the web site.

Winstep Xtreme, besides doing everything Ultimate does, also gives you Desktop Modules (the desktop version of the in-dock and in-shelf modules, a bit like the Windows 7 sidebar widgets), hotspots (activation methods to launch applications, open menus, run internal commands, etc...), skinnable user-definable menus, and a more powerful (and much more flexible), skinnable, version of the Windows taskbar. Winstep Xtreme also comes with the Pro version of the Winstep Start Menu Organizer.

Not only that, with Winstep Xtreme the context menus in Nexus Ultimate become skinnable as well, assuming whatever theme you have currently selected in NextSTART.

I know I'm suspect in saying this, but... Go for it. Lots more value for money there.

Don't forget it gives you a 30 day trial version, so try it and figure out for yourself if Xtreme is worth the extra cost for you.

I agree. The at-a-glance value of the Nexus chart is really helpful. Thanks for the quick response, once again...a tremendous "feature" of your products in and of itself.

Thanks. That helps. I'm using the trial right now but wasn't sure what was Ultimate, what was Xtreme. Frankly, I'm using few of the Xtreme features at this point. I have created multiple docks, using up most of my screen edge space, thus rendering hot spots something of a moot point. Never have been a big desktop gadget guy. (BTW...any chance of a DIGITAL in-dock clock? The analog is just too small on my netbook.) I'm not even using WinStart...docks actually seem to fit my way of working better. The one thing I haven't played with that has me wondering is the menus and Start Menu Organizer. Can you give me a bit of a "vision" for the potential these features have?

A final question, best illustrated by an example: When right-clicking on the Google icon on Windows taskbar, context sensitive options are given including opening a new window/instance of Google, opening an incognito window, recently closed and recently visited sites. These options do not appear on Google icons on a Nexus dock. Am I missing something?

Yup. High level of distrust here.

That context menu is called the Windows Jumplist. It is a feature that I like very much too myself (especially with Steam, as it provides access to different parts of the Steam client such as the friends list, the library, changing status, starting a pinned or recently played game...)

However, when I argued about it a couple months ago with Jorge, he seemed to be dead set on not trying to replicate/use this function... (together with the search bar of the Start Menu, both are the two features I use the most in my daily desktop usage... And I am not planning to trade them in for eye candy, sorry). I hope that there will be more users asking for this so Jorge might reconsider this (hell, make the jumplists usable only for Windows 7 users since I doubt the necessary hooks for them are in Vista/XP, something we can't do anything about).

Hey! I'm not dead set against any of those - in fact, jump lists, are high on the to do list. If you check the Beta section, over a year ago I asked everybody if they wanted jump lists, or at least functionality similar to it. The reply was 'meh', so I put that on the back burner.

I wish I could add everything I want in a single go, but resources are limited. Rome wasn't built in a day. A lot of the functionality is also tied together (for instance, it would make more sense to add jumplists when shortcuts in the taskbar and docks also double up as both launchers and running indicators).

Some of those things require re-writing a good chunck of code and a huge time investment.

Might've said it wrong, sorry for that.

That being said: Jumplists is a very niche feature at the moment, since most applications don't really properly utilize it. For example, M$'s Visual Studio 2010 (Mind you I'm using the Ultimate edition so we can't blame the free express version) only has the default jumplist properties, whereas they could for example have shortcuts for creating a new project or something like that. Compare that against Steam's features in the jumplist, which is one of the few jumplists that is properly utilized.
This is probably one of the reasons why the general response is 'meh': They don't know the true power of jumplists, because even Microsoft doesn't really utilize it to the fullest potential.

Right click on the dock clock - select 'Style' then 'Digital'

It has a calendar attached so it's still kind of small but you can always make the dock icons larger.

Duh. Still finding my way around all the goodies. I kinda figured it would be a bit underpowered without a digital/analog option, but wasn't gonna say anything. Thanks, Dan. BTW...we're nearly neighbors. I live in central NH, work in Boston.

Rex

By the way, Jorge, this might be interesting for you:
API code pack.

It's C#/VB.NET though, so I don't know whether you would use it or not. But perhaps you might be able to utilize a part of it. IIRC you used a different language, like the old Visual Basic?
Anyway, it contains an API for the Jump lists as well, which might be useful for you.