Comments from my post about customization...

Someone sent in the following in email:

Just wanted to reply to your comment on skinning. My point is simple. Think how much money people spend on furniture, interior decoration, landscaping, clothes, good looking sports cars. People like having cool, stylish looking stuf. Now, consider how much time you spend looking at your furniture and how much time you spend looking at Windows. If you are like me, you spend far more time looking at Windows. I sincerely hope you guys give people more visual style customization out of the box in Vista than in XP. Seriously, what if you could only buy your next car in Britney Spears blue, monocolor silver, or pale olive?

Slate is a start, but there's quite a bit you guys could do with simple color, animations, shadows, etc., that wouldn't break future compatibility.

This is a good point - we certainly can go farther with simple things like colors, and we are definitely looking at what's possible there...Stay tuned.