I love the look and feel of Windows XP. No one can deny that the user interface is very slick. The only other GUI that compares to XP is Mac OS. So imagine my dismay when I compiled my first VB.NET application and ran it. The controls still look like Windows 2000 controls. No XP look and feel at all with any control.

Bear in mind that my first .NET application was written years ago. I can only hope that VS.NET 2005 provides an XP look and feel. So in desperation I started searching the web for some replacement controls.

The company I found is Skybound. They give most of their controls away for free but a fee for the source code. I started using their VisualStyles product. The look and feel it provides is great except at a large performance cost. The loading of forms and controls is exponentially greater than without the tool.

Are there any other better tools or am I missing a really simple option in Visual Studio? Skybound have a great set of tools available but the performance degradation is not worth the enhanced look and feel.