well if you read up on what Vista means, you would know. it means: "A distant view or prospect, especially one seen through an opening, as between rows of buildings or trees." this means that MS is trying to pose a message that things are changing; you are walking through a a door, a passage and viewing a beautiful project that will change the world. i think they really did good with the name.

That's why they picked Vista as the name, Longhorn was only the codename while they developed it.

And if those screenshots are the default Vista interface, I'm sticking to XP. It's so damn ugly, I'm really not into dark desktop themes and all that transparency on the program interfaces is horrible. As Robson mentionned, the dropshadow on the text is way overdone. Hopefully there will be other themes to chose than that cause that's awful.