“…a lot of IT staff I know by default switches back to this old interface.”

Heh. I used to be one of those … but I stopped using the Windows Classic look when I found Opus OS 1.5 by Ross 'b0se' Harvey, Opusworks (Deviant Art). I still can’t use the default Windows XP blue theme for very long, but Vista looks pretty nice. I just don’t have the horsepower on my notebook to turn on all the pretty details …