Indeed it is. In fact, don't tell all those Mac fanboys but Windows 7 is far more configurable than the Mac operating system. On a Mac you're stuck with grey and brushed metal (depending on the app) but in Win7 you can tweak it to your hearts content, even picking very specific colors for your windows and task bar that match your room or a favorite desktop image. Yes, you could hire an interior decorator to redo your computer desktop, though we don't necessarily recommend it. :-)

There are a lot of different ways to get to the Windows "theme" and color configuration area, but I'll take my usual shortcut, right-clicking on the desktop itself.

Before we start, however, here's a little peek at my taskbar in its usual color scheme:

Not horrible, but still a rather dull and pedestrian grey, completely opaque.

Right-click on the background photo and a menu pops up:

As I've highlighted, click on "Personalize" and you'll see a lot of different choices, including a choice of background images. Stay focused though!

What we want is at the bottom of that window. Click on "Window Color":

You can see that my grey is actually known as "Sky". Hmm... doesn't look too blue on the screen. In any case, shortly you'll see a bunch of very attractive colors:

What's more important to notice here, however, are the controls under the color swatches: "Enable transparency" and "Color intensity". They're both super important to attaining just the effect you want. For example, I'll change to pink, enable transparency and slide the "intensity" slider towards the left:

Now look at my task bar:

Gorgeous, eh? And note how elements of the desktop photo "bleed" through the taskbar too.

This also affects window colors, so check out how a light green with transparency looks for this shrunken window:

Finally, I picked dark blue and just a little transparent, then clicked on "Save changes", and here's what I ended up with:

Very attractive and smart looking. And you can do it too. Enjoy!