when I ran the benchmark I used Visual-17, and I just did another with Hacker OS and Hacked02. They all ran better numbers than explorer. You could always try a minimal theme, less moduales less memmory needed. Now you have me wondering is your system homegrown or custom order. And just in case your wondering mine is homegrown for only $475 and turns better numbers than any Dell or Gateway with any Pentium I have seen. A friend and I spent long hours running tests to get those results but all those systems were stock and mine is far from it. My poor machine is just about tweaked out, so I think, but hey there is always room for improvement don't you think/