As for beating Gnome with a stick to make it more like Explorer, I’d love to hear how this turns out in the long run. I’d be more up for teaching users how to use the new interface than making the interface like the old one; Gnome is much easier to use, IMHO. Maybe the endless configuration options are confusing, but it’s sufficiently similar while being more powerful. Just my two cents.

As for the printer, good luck! Used to have a lexmark, never did get it properly working under linux. That Brother we saw in The Stationary Box has really good linux support apparently, including deb packages available from the Brother site. I’m considering the purchase…