[dancesdrunk]

I quite like the new design, and I've been using it since it was in "beta" a couple of months ago.

It certainly provided a couple of frustrating days before I got used to it, but I find it much more soft on the eyes - to me the old layout now looks pretty harsh; giving the impression of being just "functional".

A lot of non-technical folks I work (and live!) with find the new design much, much more pleasing. Bear in mind these are the folks that use hotmail, yahoo etc - so they really are after the "eye candy" more than the functionality; and with google's new social push I can assume this is now the target audience.

My only complaint would be about the icons; regardless of wether you've used Gmail before - you will get caught out; a few days ago it took me a good few minutes before I could find out how to get to my contacts.