managed to get appows installed properly, find that i enjoy appows peak quite a bit. i also found this neat program called Tclock that lets you customize your system tray clock. its annoying not having it displayed on the bottom of the screen, no more dumb rainmeter clock.
get it here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?1epl9r3vkm1mvp9i recommend you give it a look if anyone is interested in changing fonts or displays in that general area. switching to winamp and using rainmeter just to skin the music player has saved me some coding time, and i dont really need foobars features as i just want to play music. i like the one im using now, but it doesnt look like its supporting certain fonts.