I must say that a squared off taskbar may revive skinning. I know I don't want any more squared stuff that I'm forced to have. I never run any of the Aero skins for than reason. I prefer more of the Xiandi style taskbar, or I.R.Brainiac style skins.   

Flat, squared off, dull, plain, boring taskbars are good for reviving skinning...IMHO.  

At last!  A way to make Windows7 ugly. Skin it to look like Windows8.  

 WindowBlinds could already give us "a cleaner taskbar and squared off edges" ....... Windows Classic.

I'm running the Metro skin right now. It's pretty basic too but I like clean.

I bet Neowin users would like it (unless they knew it was running via WindowBlinds). 

Might not wanna read the comments on the news post over there then.  

But I agree with the others, I love the clean skins like the news ones included.

Tried the Win8 Metro skin in XP, has a couple of issues though like a partial user name showing up on the right side top of the start panel and the top transparent window frame gradients are a bit messed up also, highly evident when background is dark behind it (also a problem in Vista and Windows 7). Might want that looked at Brad.

Other than that, I have decided it definitely is not a skin for me.

Well I could handle the looks of the windows and such.

The taskbar needs work imo. One reason alone that I use WB.

And I've seen better start buttons at the Walmart self serve checkout.

You can bet if I submitted a button like that, I'd be catching some flack.

I like clean, too, but that is plain boring.  Too many elements look like original MS, and I thought the idea of skinning was to get away from the bland and plain ugly that MS serves up.

Clean is good when working and distractions are detrimental.

High contrast black and white ... well, MS is basing killing the start menu on evidence that people lake pinning and the W7 taskbar. The high contrast stuff should finish the job, unless we exsanguinate from the lacerations caused by the sharp corners first.

Well, Bins and Tiles should cover both, and Windowblinds should allow us to soften the colors/shaded to something less jarring and blinding and change out the Walmart start button.