I have excluded tablaunchpad from skinning but it still does it.
i have tried: exlude and use specific skin: disabled the freaking tab launchpad still has it's tabs skinned and without text.
And as tab launchpad actually enhances my productivity I would rather have the texts visible on the tabs. Also this seems to be skin dependable? Earlier skin I used didn't skin the tabs, but with the latest beta my previous skin stopped working (update problem, had to try update half a dozen times?) I use diamond now.