PPC-6700 Questions

[Genocide]

I have a PPC-6700, I've only tweaked it a little bit (SPB Mobile shell, some registry tweaks and whatnot).

But when I was browsing around these forums I see that people have whole new interfaces and whatnot (which I want )

A couple of questions..

1. Are there any mobile shells that any of you would reccomend? (I only really use text messaging/calling/contacts)
Spb mobile shell laggs the hell out of my ppc

2. Is there any way to speed up my pocket pc? or by removing everything but text messaging/calling/contacts?
That would be awesome

3. Are there any alternate text messaging applications that I can use?
The outlook express style text messaging application is annoying and slow.

4. What is a kitchen? What is an apache kitchen and whatnot? How do I install? Are there any step-by-step guides?
I found the ppc kitchen website but did not get that good an explanation when reading on what it is. Can anyone explain this?

It'd be great if anyone can answer these questions
Thanks in advance