with a whole lot of fans (that may not be skinners)
i'm sure there are articles out there that have been writen on the subject of what skinning is and how it can benefit and customize the experience of the user. yet here i am writing my own! 
why? because some friends have asked me, and well, i wanted to give my own takes along with screen captures of my own as well. basically i want to write this from the user (not skinner) point of view, with little to no skinning knowledge. fan fic if you will.
note that most of the products i use are stardock. i am in no way sponsored by stardock (Link) to speak of their products, it's just that they are what i have found, not only easier to use, but as well at an affordable price and great value for the money. they are, however, not the only skinning/skinning enabled products i use. and no, of course, it doesn't mean they are the only ones doing this stuff or necessarely the best (they are the best for me, but it's all about taste and taste can not be judged nor compared!)
(in a way, this article is both dedicated to dark star, mr. delite & trey luv)
what skinning can do for you:
skinning can enhance your pc-use by beautifying/customizing your pc interface. there are skinning products for both mac & windows. basically, you can make your user interface the way you want to, with very few limits at this point and in this day and time. i have seen people make windows look like the stargate console, like a mac, or make winxp look like vista or win 3.11!
beyond changing colors, layout and such, of course, you can also make your workspace customized to your needs: you can have specific things show up on your desktop that link to your work folders/download folders/music folders with such info as the size of the folder, the amount of files in it, etc. you can create docklets that give you stock exchange info, weather info, diskspace info, etc. you can have docks with tabs divided in several sections according to your needs (on my own pc, i have one dock atop my screen - it hides when i'm not hovering with my cursor over it, only showing the tabs - with tabs such as todos, system info - shows ram usage, cpu usage & date & time -, and web - shows curent weather, temperature, and mail in both yahoo & gmail mailboxes. on the left i have my start button - plan is to be able to get rid of the start bar/task bar/system tray whenever i want - launch bar and similar in a "main" tab, then an internet tab with links to all my internet programs, a program tab with all my favorite and most used programs, a stardock & skining tab with all my customization softwares, a game tab and a tool tab.) this is one possibility but of course, we all have different needs! i have also an optional dock with the system tray & task bar option...
several skinning products: - this is not an extensive list since i probably do not know all skinning products out there! but these are some that i have used and found practical
windowblinds: (part of object desktop)
with window blinds you can customize the look of windows 2000 & xp, as well as any theme-aware apps, to be just what you want.
Link
note that with windowblinds 5 (still in beta) you can also have transparent borders for your windows, glowing effects, transparent start panel, etc.
Link
icon packager: (part of object desktop)
i really dislike the original icons of winxp. i mean, they're truly ... plain! but even more so than allowing us to load an icon theme with just one click (for example, with just one click you have all your icons or nearly looking like those on a mac), ip also offers (if the icon set supports it) great quality icons of up to 128/128 dimensions! that means that those icons that are deformed because they were only made in a small size (let's say 32x32) can be replaced!
Link
desktop x: (part of object desktop)
in the case of desktopx, it is much more a question of a theme than a skin. with it, you can - my own words here, i'm sure that's not the proper terminology - create a surface that serves as a desktop, for example making it look like the stargate console. you can also create widgets and objects (see - my - description below)
Link
rainlendar:
a neat calendar that incorporates todos & events. there are many skins to match most windowblinds skins and other skins.
Link
sysmetrix:
sysmetrix can show a variety of information, from just the time, to ram/cpu/memory usage as well as mail, weather, etc. depending on the skin.
Link
the one skinable program most people know of is winamp. winamp plays a wide variety of media and can dramatically change depending on the skin you are using.
Link
note that tools like avedesk, object dock and others also offer the ability to add widgets & such. basically what i mean by that is that you can download (or create) mini-'programs' that can offer a variety of info (from mail, to trash, to more).
note that for a more intelligent (lol) description of several of these items you can go to the following link: Link
why skinning is an art (why the title):
i sincerely think skinning is an art because some of the things you see out there ... well... are pure work of art! XoD seriously, i have several sites i go to (one much more so than others) listing skins for nearly all the products listed above. they show me that the possibilities are endless, and since i have yet (but i'm planning to!) to create a skin of my own, they manage to satisfy my visual needs completely!
for more details, you can visit two communities, wincustomize is my favorite in terms of organized content, community, & quality of skins. i also encourage you maddly to subscribe to it as soon as you realize its value. why? because it helps keep the site up. deviantart is my other favorite, but is much more art-oriented (hence, some things you find have nothing to do with skinning although they are great quality items). since my passion is skins, i prefer the first. (this also may be due to the fact that i am far from an artist i think, particularly digital art!) there are also numerous other communities, but if you search joeuser or wincustomize you will find them soon enough!
the same way that i have several actors who, if i hear or see that they are featured in a movie, regardless i will always try to see the movie, i have several skinning artists that i will always checkout regardless because their work satisfy my needs and tastes. there are others that deliver great stuff, but once again, it is a question of taste. (i like a variety of clean, neat - by that i mean simple and sober -, modern looking skins and those tend to be the ones i download. that doesn't mean that wild, extremely busy skins are no good, so don't put words in my mouth, eh!). i hence recommend you go to the galleries of the following artists (search in wincustomize or elsewhere) to see what i'm talking about: conniew69 (she doesn't have that much stuff right now, but i love her hot pink themed icons), Pixtudio (classic!), JJ Ying (i'm currently using his hot pink icon suite! - candy vivian -,
KoL_ (gorgeoussssss windowblinds skins!), D. Arnaez great icons and more, yangge (high quality work)... etc.
actually, there are several more, but i feel to lazy checking them and anyway, it's a question of taste. so trust me, if you don't know anything about skinning or about these tools, they're well worth checking out!