This is an issue of unskilled devs using ancient UI design approach, usually not even bothering with skinning it. Things like bitTorrent were done in Java (cor

This is an issue of unskilled devs using ancient UI design approach, usually not even bothering with skinning it. Things like bitTorrent were done in Java (correct me if I'm wrong), and you have no clue which language they are done in when looking at UI. But this a bit of extra effort, and for intranet apps, nobody usually bothers. Another reason for oh-not-so-windows-look of UI is something microsoft finally begun discovering - that there are other platforms than Windows. Java UI works anywhere where you have working JRE, and if you've ever seen Linux's KDE/GNOME/XFCE etc. then you might realize it ain't easy to come up with a cross-section between them. You need to hack things with Wine or similar to have it +-++ work the other way around (ie MFC app -> anywhere but MS world, and even there it might be tricky with all dll hell).