[Motorola Droid and Milestone General] Erovia:
I've been using CM10 since the first build and I came to the conlusion, that a custom launcher can make a huge difference in the overall experience.

Although I write this thread mainly with CM10 in mind, it also applies to CM7.

The first launcher I've found great is FTL Launcher.

The homescreen is really fast as light, but it is a really basic experience.

I like simplicity, so I love the the possibility to hide the dockbar's background and being able set the dock icons' size to small. (Pro only)

The only thing I don't really like is that the only way to resize a widget is to set its size before adding it to the homescreen. Also, it is a Pro only feature.

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The app drawer is as simple as it looks. The scrolling is vertical. The homescreen works like charm but the app drawer I've found a bit sluggish.

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The best thing about this launcher dispite its flaws is its lightness. After restart I had 60MB of free RAM, yes, on CM10. Later it dropped down to 55-40MB but it is still pretty good. It uses about 10-14MB of memory.

The second launcher is Lightning Launcher.

This one still amazes me. It is the lightest launcher I've ever seen with its 828KB yet it has tons of feature.

A few things I really like: the homescreen can be horizontal, vertical or both at the same time. You can drop icons and widgets everywhere and freely scroll on the screen. One cool thing is the icons are rotatable.

But here comes the best thing, the "Free Mode". If you turn it on, there is no grid. You can place anything anywhere.

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In the app drawer you can hide icons (they go to a new tab) and even the background can be displayed. The fast experience applies to the app drawer too.

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After a restart I had 55-50MB of free RAM with this launcher and it stays at that level. It uses only 9.6MB of RAM. :good:

The third one is for only those who can sacrifice performance for awesomness. :p

It is Next Launcher. It is made by the authors of GO Launcher.

This one is a real eye-candy. Full of fancy transition effects.

The developers say one need a phone with dual-core cpu to run it, but I'm still amazed how smooth it is on my Milestone and this launcher is still beta. I didn't find landscape mode, maybe it is not implemented yet.

But here comes the bad news, it is designed to new phones. Our CPU can handle the stuff but it uses around 22MB of RAM. I only have 45-20MB of free RAM with this launcher.

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I've tested Smart Launcher. (Thanks to fellow member pt0.)

This one is quite unique. After the first start, you will be asked for you for favorite app for listening to music, calling your friends, etc., and after it is done, you will get 6 nice, holo-styled icon. These icons are shortcuts to the apps, you selected in the first step. Of course, you can add more or delete these icons.

The homescreen looks like this:

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I like the option to hide these icons by default and only show them when you touch the middle of the screen.

A homescreen can't be more minimalistic than this:

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The app drawer separates your app into different categories, like: games, internet, settings, etc.

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This launcher eats 12-13MB of RAM.

I love the clean and minimalistic look of this launcher, but it ties the users hand. It gives some nice features, like the left-handed option, but in general, there is not enough room for customization. (At least for me, I love to customize all my stuff for my needs)

The biggest drawback is the lack of widget support. (In the paid version you can enable it, but the app says it will increase the memory need by 10-20MB and it's just not worth it, imo.)

Xperia Z Launcher

( If you'd like to try it, check out THIS thread )

This is a port of the latest Xperia Launcher from the new Xperia Z. It only works on ICS and JB, but works on those quite well.

With icons and widgets all around it stays fast and snappy. My favorite is the weather widget, it's a real eye-candy and looks great on any background.

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In the app drawer sadly there is no option to hide items but they can be easily put in a folder and the option to sort them freely is pretty useful.

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There is not as much option for customization as in other launchers I've mentioned here, but it works great on kabaldan's great CM9 and CM10 roms.

It consumes 15MB of memory on my phone with widgets and icons on three homescreen tabs.