I'm in the market for a new desktop shell, and Winstep seemed to have a lot of what I was looking for. And since some other shells haven't updated in a very long time, this seemed perfect.

Then I noticed the last update for Winstep as being over two years ago, and read on the forums a bit about possible end of life for the software, and red flags started going up.

Is the software still under development? Apparently the support email no longer functions due to spam, which by itself would only be cause for minor concern. But knowing the software has bugs and needs fixes, and nothing's been done in an extended period of time makes it more than a passing worry. Combine that with very slow license key delivery, and one must wonder if sales are being maintained purely to milk the product without further modification or fixes.

Would be nice to know what the story is.

I think you have been victim to the FUD coming from some other users in here. Some of them, unfortunately, long time users, who think that, by being like that, will somehow "push" the programmer to post or even release a new version.

For starters, there is no "end of life" thing. Yes, Winstep hasn't seen an update in years, but it's not going to die.
Moreover: the current software is NOT in dire need of fixes and it's NOT full of bugs, as you may have wrongly surmised. The current Winstep and Nexus builds work without problems on 99.9% of all cases.
Obviously, I'm not saying "there are no bugs whatsoever". I don't think there is one single programme on the planet that can claim that. However, there are no major bugs -- otherwise it wouldn't have been released -- and very few minor ones. All in all, I'd say the programme has its 'quirks'; things that you just get used to, like the fact that a vertical subdock of a vertical dock will slide in vertically, not horizontally, like its parent dock. You know, things like that.

I have a feeling the same goes for licences -- apart from competing products' fans possibly posting here. Licences are sent by hand, in order to weed out some known trouble-makers and keep the records clean (i.e. not selling to known pirates etc). However, Jorge, the programmer, is a human being and thereby allowed to go hiking or visit a friend for a few days. In *most* cases, though, the licence IS being sent within the first 12 hours, and I've personally verified that with quite a few users. In most other cases, the licence e-mail ends up in the spam folder, whereas there have been cases of over-zealous anti-spam mailboxes which require **sender verification** (!!!) and others that simply won't allow the licence mail to pass.
The "slow licence delivery" is not a real issue. It's been hugely blown out of proportion by... *people*.

Most users that come in here to whine about no new releases, my guess is that they whine because they want *new* stuff, or it so happens that one of these 'quirks' really annoys them. For instance, we've had a user who wanted a pop-out subdock (like the Macintosh OS X shelf spring-loaded icon thingy) and went really sour when he realised it's not coming within 5 days of him asking.

Rest assured, though, that there are no show-stopper bugs in Winstep. It won't crash, freeze, halt, reboot your computer or format your drive. If your wife leaves you for the handyman, it won't be Winstep's fault. If your VCR gets burnt, your cat mowed, your dog turns gay, your toilet clogs up, it rains on your way to work and you have no umbrella... no, won't be Winstep!

And to wrap it up... no, I'm not an employee. I used to be a plain user; now I'm a moderator because I volunteered. I'm not getting anything out of this, so I have no profit, monetary or otherwise, for posting this here. It's just the truth.

To reinforce Skagon's comments (well, some of those in the first post anyway) - I have Winstep Xtreme running on a number of machines, including my main work PC (which is locked down by my IT dept so I can't tweak to make awkward software work), on Win7 & Win8.1. I have no issues on any of the installations. There's a few things I'd like to work differently or new features I'd like to see, but that is no different to any of the software I use. It's worth bearing in mind that a forum like this will only really have bug reports (some of which will may not actually be bugs) and feature requests, so it's inherently critical.
Purchasing or not is entirely up to you, but if you do purchase it's highly unlikely that Winstep is going to conflict with something in your set-up and cause you grief or that you'll find it limited by not having had recent updates.

I guess my question was answered, though the manner in which it was leaves much to be desired. Can't truly say I'm confident about the purchase. In the short time I've had Extreme in demo mode I've found multiple bugs; nothing that severely impacts it's ability to function, but fix-worthy ones nonetheless.

If I may leave as much as I'm taking away from the topic: even if there are few fixes to do, or you don't charge current owners for them.. updates are perceived as the makers caring about their work, and their customers. I don't remember the last time I saw software that was perfect, and have never seen a title go over a year without being virtually abandoned. I'd recommend updating with small bug fixes, offer it as a free update - if for no other reason than to send the message that the software is still maintained, still cared for, and perhaps even still being developed.

My .02 - take it with a grain of salt. And thank you for the feedback.

Unfortunately I am forced to agree with you. Sorry about that.



Care to share?

I didn't write them down as I came across them, mostly I was learning Winstep at the time and they weren't large. I will continue to use it and reconfigure it, and when I run across them again I will be sure to post out here.

Thanks.

since jaga can't think of any at this time i'll post a couple i know have been mentioned more than a few times and never addressed.

1. the recycler hanging from time to time when you rightclick it to empty it. i knows at least two others have mentioned this.

2. gregory2001 brought up an issue you told me had to be something i had to be doing which is if you mouse around workshelf too fast it crashes. well i tested object dock under the same conditions and ran it through hell and no crash.

And I've explained this as well before, HERE.

The Recycler is emptied by calling the appropriate SHEmptyRecycleBin function. That function will block until it returns, i.e.; if the Recycle Bin has thousands of items and/or you have a slow hard disk, Nexus/WorkShelf will temporarily freeze until the function finishes doing its job. Once the function returns, everything goes back to normal.

Don't see how you call this a bug, it's not like the application crashes or anything. Even Explorer will temporarily freeze under certain operations.



Can't find the post by Gregory.

Steps to reproduce? Does it happen with any theme? Does it happen with every mouse over effect? Is there a pattern to it, i.e.; can you reproduce it reliably if you always do the same thing? Does it happen on a dock, on the Shelf, or both?

I can't reproduce it here and my arm is already tired of wiggling the mouse.

I feel I played a role in this, so I offer my apologies as well, to you and Jorge, if I made things worse. Sometimes, I just don't know *how* to deal with situations like this.
Your feedback is always appreciated, not only regarding the software, but also the forum. Feel free to post (or PM), if you have any comments or suggestions (and don't want to be dragged into a fight).
Cheers!

The only time Workshelf ever crashes on me is because of the drive. Some of the shortcuts I use are linked to external hard drives.

Unfortunately because I couldn't afford a Win7 PC with an i7 processor, I had to settle for an i5. One of the downsides to that is the USB ports were all 2.0. I had to wait a year to afford purchasing the limit for my PC of two 3.0 USB ports. Unfortunately it cannot handle more than two 3.0 ports. The rest are 2.0.

What happens with the ones linked to the 2.0 ports especially if I don't use them for a while is that I think the drive goes to sleep. If I click on the link in Workshelf (or on the drive itself directly from Computer) I can hear it starting up with a sort of whine. This action will cause a pause or temporary crash in Workshelf and also pauses when I click directly on the drive in Computer which from my view has absolutely nothing to do with Winstep Xtreme.

Chucky and Gregory, is it possible that the problem with Workshelf crashing could be because of your drive or Windows itself and not Winstep products?

I also think Jorge is correct about the Recycle Bin issue. If I don't open or empty the Recycle Bin for a while, I get the pause which again has nothing to with Winstep Xtreme or other Winstep products.

Windy, you are right in that your external drive falls to "sleep mode" and stops spinning. In fact, if you've got more than one drives, even internal, they too will stop spinning after a period of inactivity.
I witness the same behaviour both with my (too many) internal drives as well as the external.

Having said that, however, I have to say that I've never had Winstep crash, regardless of whether the shortcuts were linking to an internal drive, external drive or even network locations within my local network. Winstep would, inevitably, freeze until the hard drive spun up or the network location was accessed, but I have honestly never had Winstep crash.

About your USB 3.0 ports, I assure you, you can add as many as you want -- as long as you have PCIe slots to spare. There are PCIe cards that come with USB 3.0 controllers -- I just did a quick search and found PCIe x1 cards featuring 7 USB 3.0 ports (5 external and 5 internal). Theoretically, you could add as many of those as you want, or try to find some one card equipped with more controllers, if, for some reason, you need more than 7.

windy i appreciate the insight but i've tested everything the shelf points to at one time or another to see if they could be the problem and all drives are running without any discernible errors. like i said above if i wait for the animation to stop and then mouseover to the tab i want then there is usually no crash of workshelf. less than a year ago i bought a usb 3.0 card and drive encloser kit. the drive in it is a copy of everything that is on my non os internal drives plus a copy of items i have on my desktop. the only issue i every have with it is once i click on one of the folders on it's tab is the folder will open showing the contents and from there i might have to wait a second or two to click a folder in that folder, but at that level i'm already off the shelf and only dealing with explorer. the only thing i think may be happening is just maybe workshelf is attempting to poll all drives that it has access to at the same time. if that's the case then any program would have a problem. other than that i'm truly out of ideas here.

I've had it crash once in a blue moon but it was always because of some weird glitch in Windows caused by a program other than Winstep Xtreme that I was using or recently installed. In other words, in all of the times I remember it happening, it affected Windows in some way also.



I can't remember, but if I'm not mistaken, I think the reason I can't put more than two 3.0 ports is two-fold.

First, with the exception of the two I replaced, I think the 2.0 slots are designed to handle only 2.0 and the way they're configured will not accept 3.0.

Second, if I remember correctly, I was told by the manufacturer that my processor cannot handle the rest of them being 3.0 and the only way to have all of them 3.0 is to move up to an i7 processor. Bear in mind that my PC cannot handle Blue-ray also because of my processor and video card-even with a dedicated one for the PC. I was also told that I would have to move up to an i7 if I want to have a Blu-ray drive installed.

I know this is off-topic, but... trust me, none of those two reasons is valid. They were bullshitting you, probably trying to get you to buy a more expensive processor or computer.

Firstly, the existing USB slots are indeed designed to handle only USB 2.0, that's why you get a card like this:


which is providing extra USB 3.0 ports.

The processor itself can handle a LOT more than a few USB 3.0 ports. Even 10-year-old processors can handle USB 3.0, let alone current ones.

The same goes for Blu-Ray. Believe me when I say... ANY CPU that's come out in the last decade is enough, with an exception of just very few of them with integrated video cards, that are >5 years old. True, some very old processors combined with on-board video cards, from 2004-2006 (like SiS, ALi or VIA chipsets), cannot handle BluRay decoding. Any CPU-VGA combination after, say, 2007, is MORE than enough.
Modern CPUs, especially Intel's i5... there's no question about it, mate. They were bullshitting you BIG time.
Your computer is way, way, WAY more than enough for both USB 3.0 AND BluRay.

I think we've hijacked this thread... then again... thread's a gonner from "hello". Anyway, if you need any help upgrading your PC, just PM me or make a post in the off-topic.