Last night, I dreamed my desktop in Windows Vista was really cool. The icons looked like actual buttons, that appeared to depress when clicked. The buttons together covered the screen area, sort of like a keyboard. It made a loudish, dramatic “clunk” sound when a button was pushed. Everything looked kind of grimy. It was steampunk-y.
In the dream I wasn’t like “Wow, this is cool,” rather, in the dream, this was just what computer desktops were like.
I want that desktop. Is there any way for me to make it happen?
Well, there are various skins and themes that have been created for Vista. An example would be this site. Looking for something that has buttons (I’m thinking you mean like a typewriter maybe?) might take a while, but if you do a google search for Vista themes, I imagine there’s probably something out there.
There’s plenty of artwork in google images that would give you a steampunk style background. You can change the colour of the start bar and windows etc yourself by right clicking on the desktop, clicking personalize then going into Window Color and Appearance. Much more colour options in the classic appearance I think. But downloading a skin or theme will change the appearance of everything anyway, if you can find one that suits.
Any theme you choose might not come with the desirable sounds though, so searching a site like this might be an idea. Once you’ve found what you want. Go into personalize again, click on Sounds and make a new sound scheme (you can assign sounds to whatever you want in there). Just click browse, and find the sound you’ve downloaded. Might be an idea to convert them to Wav files if they’re not already in that format (google audacity, that should handle any conversion you need to do, if required).
I’d look myself for something like for you, but I’ve already gone and found lots of Star Trek sounds, icons etc to make my computer into a replica of Voyager, so I’m fresh out of energy to search. 
Which reminds me, if you’re stuck for finding themes, but have found pictures that you like that would look good as icons (to make them look like buttons - try googling what you had in mind) then you can assign them yourself. Right click on the icon, press change icon, browse, then you can change it to whatever you want. Oh you can also change the mouse pointers and stuff in the Personalize menu. Probably worth having a look round for things you might want changing to get your desired theme.
Have fun. 