It would be too big a coincidence to assume I have the same shade of gray but since both of my monitors are usually full of applications running I really don't see the need, (pun not intended) to have a picture there.

Plus I'm old enough to remember wthe days when having a desktop wallpaper was enough of a system drain that it did slow down the PC.

When I first started using Macs, they had 9in black and white screens. The preferences let you change the pattern of the desktop, but you could also edit the tile that made the pattern. Hours of fun.

Then came colour. Wow! Eye-popping patterns were de rigeur.

Finally, around OS8 we got the option of proper pictures. Sanity prevailed at last. I used some of the original wallpapers from that period until quite recently. Now I have my main screen set to the grey, while my laptop screen shows an astronomical photo from the Astronomy Picture of the Day site. I've got a collection of several hundred now.

The Mac OS ties in with iPhoto and Aperture, letting you select images from those apps, too, if you want. I'm sure other OSes do that, but I just wanted to point out the scope for customisation available now, compared to editing black or white pixels in a tiny box!

Windows 3.x used to do that. I think it was either Windows 2000 or XP that the pattern feature was taken out


Windows 1 had colour


Ok, this is just spooky... I've got my main PC desktop set to grey and my laptop has a picture of my star, (there's a link in another thread)

Mine.

A plain black background - and no icons displayed on it either.

NICE!

Image is clickable.

^^^
Clicky