> In the old days of Windows 3.1, it was common to walk into an office and see each person’s desktop colors, fonts and wallpapers tuned to their personalities,

> In the old days of Windows 3.1, it was common to walk into an office and see each person’s desktop colors, fonts and wallpapers tuned to their personalities, just like their physical desk, with one’s family portrait or plants. Author (and many commenters here) take as a given that this is a good thing, but I'm not so sure. Starting with the physical desk metaphor - you probably have trinkets and photos and whatnot, and then a mess. An idiosyncratic mess, but still a mess. I'm defining "mess" here from the perspective of everyone who isn't you; which you could argue doesn't matter in the physical desk metaphor. Thinking back over the ~10 offices I've worked in, maybe 20% of people keep their desk tidy in a way that I could find a pen or a stack of post-its at first glance. Maybe it doesn't matter if someone else can be productive at your desk; but it can't be denied that the average human will (literally) leave food to rot on their desk. Let's move to the virtual desktop. We've been saying we love our Windows 3 customizations, and randomize our wallpapers and Winamp skins every few minutes, right? Back when we were playing all those video games? But now we're adults with jobs (maybe even coworkers) and productivity actually matters, right? But we still wish for the power to make our desktops messy. Why? Maybe it doesn't matter if someone else can be productive at your computer, but it can't be denied that millions of hours have already gone into making you productive there. Upon reflection, is this a freedom that you actually need; one that helps you in any way? What purpose was served by that flat, warm, old can of soda on your desk? Do you like all that paper everywhere? Do you even know what most of it is? Unless your job function is some type of artist, you're almost certainly better off using the consensus interface; and if it has problems, contributing the fixes for those problems back to everyone. And clean up that takeout container that's slipped halfway onto your neighbor's desk. Edit: I'm all for customizing the way that things work. Rebind your hotkeys, script stuff, write your own text editor- if it saves you time and you can prove it, go for it; but when it comes to colors, transparency, animations, all that stuff... just get your work done and then go outside or watch TV.