Welcome to the forums artngo, glad to have you here

I have moved your thread into the SGS3 AT&T root forum to receive some better feedback.

Personally i love CyanogenMod and am running CM10. I love it because i think the battery life is so much better than stock.

Hope this helps

 

Welcome to the forums Art. using different ROM's can have different effects on your phone. I use ParanoidKANGdroid's ROM, which is a mixture of CM10, Paranoid android and AOKP... It allows for the most customization of any phone I've ever seen, and the battery life is excellent. Be warned that when messing with ROM's, there are slim chances something may go wrong, and you may be forced to go back to stock to remedy the problem. I would venture to say that most of us here like flashing custom ROM's to our phones,mostly because we can't seem to leave well enough alone!

 

Check QBKing77's video guides on YouTube. Best video guide I've seen.

 

I am currently running CM10 & it is more of a stock Android experience. It doesn't have all of the bells & whistles that the Touchwiz ROM has. Don't get me wrong. It still has a bunch of options. Also, my phone feels like it has doubled in speed. My phone runs MUCH better on CM10! Keep in mind when looking at ROM's that sometimes they have issues that have yet to be ironed out. I still have decided to go to CM10 though & I love it. Message me if you need a little help. Good luck.

 

hey art, as being new to rooting and roms and all that you'll probably have a lot of questions. i probably wont be able to answer most, honestly.. but i can tell you why i flash different roms, basically the reasons i like installing custom roms over having a stock rom is because of the customization. with the stock rom you only have certain choices to customize your phone with. im actually running cm10 and i'd say its a really good rom in my opinion. i haven't tried to many of them because to me it is a hassle flashing rom after rom trying to find one thats perfect. i just try to do as much research on the roms i like and try like 2 or 3. its not hard flashing the roms but it does take about 5-10 mins flashing each rom(or at least thats how long it takes me), thats not counting the time it takes to backup the rom youre currently using(its always a good idea to backup). anyways.. im trying to cut this short, cm10 and other roms just provide more freedom to custom stuff like the UI and the lockscreen or the app drawer or the status bar and notification bar, so thats why i prefer custom roms over stock.
if you have any questions or i just confused the crap out of you go ahead and message me and ill try to help you out more.

 

Art,
I too was nervous about bricking my phone when I rooted and flashed the current ROM I am using, but as long as the directions from the developer of the ROM are followed, you SHOULDN'T have any problems. Let us know if we can help in any way.. We are here to help!
Scott

 

Just wanted to throw my 2