Summary: Win95 Desktop replacement?

[James Klock]

Thanks to those of you who have sent me email regarding my search for a
tool to lock down/simplify my Win95 desktop, while attempting to
simultaneously change the default Win95 error message for calling a program
that's on a CD not currently mounted.  Here's what I got:

The Winner is definately WinU from Bardon Data Systems.  For those familiar
with MacOS, it looks and feels not unlike the Launcher (though it is more
flexible and consequently less completely friendly to set up).  It's
inexpensive and the only thing I found which will actually use
shortcut-like icons that can't be moved and won't respond to the right
mouse button.  http://www.bardon.com/

Other suggestions were WinSelect from Hyper Technologies (the folks who
make IKiosk, apparantly...)  While an interesting program, it wasn't quite
the hideously friendly interface that I'm looking for (too
powerful/flexible at the front end).  If you're looking for something like
I was, though, it's worth a look at http://www.winselect.com/ .  They even
offer a discount for IKiosk users...

Public Access Limited suggested their beta of Parking Meter for Windows,
but as nearly as I could tell, this doesn't do any of the interface
replacement I was looking for.  Rather, it is a very innovative timing
system-- put in you disk to start your session, and when your time at the
station is up, you get booted off (apologies if this isn't accurate-- I
didn't get very far in the demo for this package.)  If that's what you're
looking for, check them out at http://www.franklintwp.org/pal .

Interface replacement aside, I had someone suggest Winbatch from Wilson
WindowWares Inc. (http://www.windowware.com/) An interesting if pricy tool,
this does some fairly sophisticated scripting for windows.  Pretty nifty
stuff, but it really is more of a programming-intensive project than I am
looking for, and is priced a little high for my blood.  

On my own, I scoured SimTelNet (http://www.simtel.net/),
http://www.windows95.com/ and http://www.32bit.com/ for both interface
replacers and simple scripters.  While I came up pretty much dry on both of
those, all three repositories are packed full of great tools, many of them
free software, including a lot of toolbar utilities.  Unfortunately, the
descriptions of these programs are not generally very explicit.

Thanks again to everyone who dropped me suggestions!

James