htc's task manager is just not robust enough for me. I used to use wisebar light,and was very happy with it, but have lately been using a combo of quickmenu, and wtask very similar functionality to wisebar light, but slightly lighter overall footprint, slightly more robust, and truly freeware.

to the op, I would recommend starting with wtask for your needs, if you feel like having a cascading start menu then start w/ quickmenu...

Which x-button do those who use x-button recommend? I am using 1.5 because I remember hearing about problems with 1.51 and 2.0, but even so, after about a day, I am left with 4 mb free of ram. This is really a problem, because it means that ram is not being recovered, despite applications being closed. I am looking now for the oxios hibernate and closeapps programs, to see if these have any effect.

Check out Quick Menu. It uses very little memory, is freeware and will allow you to close apps with the X button. Look in the software section of the forum.

I have seen absolutely no difference in 2.0 versus 1.5, although I'm always one to have the "latest" release. In the two cases I've seen someone criticize 2.0 as buggy, they have been unable to identify a specific example of how. (I'm always willing to listen and test, however.)