In case you don't know, factory defaults are the default options and other things that a piece of software comes with pre-packaged. For instance, in Microsoft Office Word 2007, there's new easier to use Styles (I know you could use them in older versions, but never so easily). I really like these new styles, heck, I even like the new default font.

However, my only dig is that everyone on Earth is going to be using them. At the moment not many people have Office 2007, so these styles looks fresh and professional, but as it becomes the norm more and more people will be using these new and swanky styling systems because it's so easy. But in the same way that Comic Sans looked brilliant when The Sims start using it, once everyone starts using it it'll make my skin crawl.

This isn't just a stab at one of Microsoft's products, there are others as well; Mambo and Joomla, phpLD and even phpBB styles all come with the same style that hasn't changed majorly in years. Soon the designs that they come with all look the same, even if the user changes the colour scheme and adds a pre-made template. Eventually the site has no personality to it.

A simple work around for this would just be for the distributor to add a different set of default styles (in the case of Word, etc) or layouts every week or so (depending on how popular the software is). This would mean a bit more work for developers, but there are thousands of free templates around the Internet for things, I'm sure they could just build one of those in for default.