The technical ingenuity is impressive. I personally find this visual quite cold and soulless, compared to previous Windows wallpapers, mostly XP's of course. For me this also coincided with Windows becoming completely useless and my moving to a Mac.
There was definitely a kind of warm, optimistic vibe that came with the Windows XP wallpaper. The whole UI language of the OS was similar too, with bubbly blues and greens everywhere. I suppose it captured a kind of positive cultural attitude towards computing.
It was a time when MS was about giving users tools to do whatever they want, and not trying to coerce them down a path to be milked for $$$.