its a new gui
explorer is a browser, its used to browse your system, techinally, theres nothing stopping it from running a new broswer...
basically, it redoes your interface withyour computer, but, xp still needs the file browser to see files and drives and stuff like that... but, you could get a new file broswer and use that, basically youd be using all your own appz, with windows xp in the bacground holding it together...
actually, that would make it even more stable... i've been running it for a week, and NOT one error. my game theater keeps doing to same old "no more headphones for you today" thing, but i haven't had explorer or anything else show up as an error.