I use Go Launcher, never had a problem with it.
Juice Defender is a brilliant little app. It'll silently switch off certain battery-draining features of your phone such as Wifi, Bluetooth, Mobile data, etc and silently wake them back up again if an app needs them. You can set it periodically wake things up, and to automatically wake things up if you turn the screen on, and there's no noticeable lag at all.
It works brilliantly - without it my phone will run out of battery around 3-4pm on a normal day at work; with JD running, it'll last all day right up till 9-10pm.