Michael Ciarlo’s Cairo Shell project has been in the works for some time but it looks like the testers are ready to start testing the first official alpha release.  The Shell is basically a replacement for Vista’s explorer which has been notoriously slow.  It will still use the underlying operating system of Vista but replace the way that it looks and feels to the user.

The test is private to only a select few testers that have been waiting for almost a year just for the chance to test it.  While no official release has come from the company yet they have posted a countdown timer on their website that indicates the release to the testers.

Maybe when Cairo Shell releases to the public it will help alleviate some of the pains of Vista for users.  Only time will tell.

Check It Out> Blog Post,  Cairo Shell

UPDATE:: It looks like the Cairo team has been looking forward to Windows 7 and has made Cairo Shell Windows 7 compatible.  Personally I am looking forward to this as so far I am not a fan of the Windows 7 shell.  There is quite a bit of tweeking that needs to be done to make it more user friendly in my oppinion.