more or less you no longer have a start menu like standard windows, you icons arent on your desktop.
Left click and youll get the equivalent of your start menu and then some.
then go to settings and launch applet.
Now i run emergedesktop.exe
emergecore.exe
and emergetray.exe and nothing else in this shell
to add new applets click the paper with a green plus sign and select the thing you want to run
once you have started it running, save it and click out and your good to go once you start it.
Stop anything you dislike in the shell.
It will make your windows startup much faster,.
And check out the program MINImize its fucking awesome when you minimize windows it makes them into little like 1" squares with either the icon for the item or a screen cap basically of where it was when you minimized and you just double click it to maximize the thing.
Setup your rocket dock for stuff you use constantly at least thats what i did.
Other then that, not to much to really figure out i mean there is prolly a shit ton of more in depth shit you can do but thats what im doing.
I dont have a clock as most of the clock addons either werent free or were fucking stupid.
So i gave up on it. Although rocket dock has a clock thing i think.
To get to My documents i just open up my computer and go to it from there same with control panel
http://aquaria.za.net/is the link for the minimize program i love it. Only had it crash like once. And it was when a bunch of other things crashed too cuz of my cod4 going all buggy