If you’d like to make your desktop a little more informative, you might check out Rainmeter. The program provides you with very customizable widgets that you can use to get the information you need about your computer or with feeds from the Internet. Rainmeter has a lot of skins so it can be made to look a lot more stylish that the default setup I have pictured below.
You can find some skins at DeviantArt or with the Rainmeter recommended skin suites. There are also a lot of skins at Customize.org for Rainmeter that look great.
Widgets don’t just have to be informative, they can also be useful with plugins for Twitter, interacting with Outlook for your e-mail or calendar, and tons of others. There’s a lot of other things you can do with Rainmeter to make your desktop more than just a place for your icons to hang out on a solid color or a standard image. Check it out if you would like to make your desktop more functional.