Make a new account on your machine? If not possible, I guess make two of the suites, one plain and one usual and switch between them as needed?

#2 - Backgrounds are dealt with in this way... but even if you disable themes on the Experience tab you still get all the WB graphics at nasty colour depths. I find it just bearable at 128K DSL speeds, because it's only work after all

I posted a similar question a while back too, but don't remember getting a response. When using the standard MS Luna skins, turning themes off in your remote desktop connection reverts screen elements back to Windows Classic Style, making things nice and fast (if a bit ugly ). It would be nice if WB recognised this hook and disabled itself for remote connections in a similar manner.