Ok I decided to be serious for a change and offer a scrap of my knowledge
for ya all vista luvers...
From my tests I have seen the following:
when you use a glass-enabled (or in other words 3d accelerated gpu enabled)
theme like AERO
the whole desktop responds faster with LESS CPU usage than with simple
classic theme.
Many say to use CLASSIC for better response.. this is a mistake if you have
a good display adaptor (graphic card)..
the way vista handles the CLASSIC
theme is very poor.. the rendering of all the desktop is slow and
irritating.. they changed this from XP
that was fast because they now wanted to include the gpu accelerated option.
So the rendering of the classic desktop is actually SLOWER than when you
enable aero!
That's why I have done a tweak on all my production machines.. I have used a
free utility called
vistaglazz http://www.codegazer.com/vistaglazz/ that enables you to use
other themes with vista (warning this is NOT supported by MICROSOFT since it
changes some files that handle the themes!)
Then I downloaded and used 2 vista "classic" themes that have been made so
that they use the 3d effects, so now I have the best of both worlds..
a simple clean and uncluttered interface that is like classic AND the use of
the GPU for the rendering of the desktop having all 3d functions enabled,
like flip 3d, taskbar thumbnails and dreamscene (I have ultimate)
I found the themes at deviantart.com there are 2 of them..
here is one
http://abkend.deviantart.com/art/Vista-AeroClassic-Final-v-1-0-71611722
and this
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/58624888/