With the release of Windows 7 beta, a lot of GUI styles have been updated on top of the changes we saw when Vista was released. If you don’t have the bandwidth to download the Beta release of Windows 7 and are still running XP, you can customize your theme to look more like Windows 7 and Vista(plus the super bar if needed, but i am not linking to that directly. I personally like XP’s menu system and not the breadcrumbs of Vista’s toolbars and menus).
First, you will need to patch windows to allow the use of 3rd party themes. This is done with a modified version of the uXtheme.dll file for XP. You can google for how to do this yourself, or download one of the many uxtheme changers that will do it for you. For now, I am going to assume you have already done or know how to do this.
Ok, first part of the new look is to get the Windows 7vg Refresh MSStyles theme from www.askvg.com: http://www.askvg.com/download-sevenvg-refresh-theme-with-superbar-for-windows-xp/
He has a lot of tweaks and tutorials on how to achieve vista transformations and windows 7 adjustments.
Next, you will want to edit the registry to change the taskbar buttons to look like Windows 7. Doing this without applying the Refresh theme will look ugly, so only change this if you are running the larger windows 7 taskbar themes: Registry Switch to give Windows 7 Smaller Iconized Taskbar Buttons:
http://www.askvg.com/get-windows-7-iconized-icon-only-taskbar-feature-in-windows-xp-and-vista/
Applying these two tweaks and a reboot will change your task bar buttons to look like Windows 7. Now for some transparency goodness.
To get a transparent(fading!! Nice) task bar and start menu, you can download a nice little app called FadeBar. It comes from deviantArt user nookian. Set transparecny for MSSTyles that have transparent themes:http://nookian.deviantart.com/art/App-Fadebar-104981479
The last touch is a program that has many tweak features, but I mainly use it for one thing. Allowing you to change the transparency of any window by scrolling the mouse wheel over the specific windows toolbar. This isn’t something that changes all windows like some tweak programs, but lets you adjust it on a per window basis, which is nice to have much better control over each window. It’s called Pistachio and you can download it here: http://pitaschio.ara3.net/index.htm
These are all freely available programs and themes for windows XP, and in my opinion are not just eye candy. No Aero flip or anything like that, but once you start using these, you will notice it gives XP a nice modern refresh and update to the interface and makes it feel new again. This all without the crazy hardware requirements of Vista(although 7 seems to be lighter on system resources and hardware requirements).
Screenshot of my desktop: here