But a growing community of computer users, weary of standard-issue windows and icons, is taking matters into its own hands.

"Who wants to look at a desktop with gray, blah, same-old windows, when you can change it at the drop of a hat to suit your mood?" asks Janet Parris, a retired teacher from North Carolina who has designed more than 100 landscapes using Kaleidoscope, a popular shareware utility for the Macintosh. Her various designs will transform a desktop into a "winter wonderland" of snowflakes and sleighs, or adorn it with roses, bunnies or Byzantine ornamentation. There are rebels on the Windows front as well, designing alternative desktops using new interface design utilities like eFX and Stardock's WindowBlinds.

How big is this community of desktop decorators? Kaleidoscope co-author Arlo Rose reports millions of downloads from 21 sites in English, French, Italian, German and Japanese; he puts the number of amateur designers developing modules for Kaleidoscope at around 2,000. Since an updated version of WindowBlinds was released in February, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell estimates it's attracted 500,000 new users; he says "tens of thousands" of PC artists are working to create new desktop looks.

Why decorate your computer desktop? Well, why decorate your home? A bare mattress and a dangling bulb might meet basic shelter needs -- but what about aesthetic pleasures? "We want a little bit of our own personality to be reflected in the things we use daily," notes Kaleidoscope designer Patricia Erigero. And, just as pets are said to grow to resemble their owners, so can computers. A mouse click can transform your desktop into a William Morris tribute, a Goth graveyard, a Balinese temple -- or maybe a working simulacrum of your late, lamented Apple Lisa operating system.

"Each theme says a lot about its creator and who they are," says eFX developer Chad Boya. "It's almost like you don't have to introduce yourself to someone who has created a theme. Just by looking at their work you instantly become connected to them and so it's real easy to get to know each other."

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