I just upgraded my WP to WordPress 2.8.4 yesterday. I know it’s been there for weeks so I was kinda late to upgrade and guess what? This morning I saw on my dashboard “WordPress 2.8.5 is available! Please update now”. Oh why are they updating so often?
Anyway, like my new look? It’s so easy to apply a new template on WordPress 2.8 (one thing I like the most from this version). Just upload the zip file from dashboard, preview, activate and voila it’s done! I didn’t loose any of my widgets either, they’re kept in Widgets section. All I needed to do was just drag them to the sidebars. WordPress really beats Blogger on this one 
. Every time I want to change my blogger blog template, I have to install the widgets one by one.
Unfortunately, this theme doesn’t support threaded comments and gravatar like the previous one. So I had to edited some PHP files in order to make them work. Don’t ask me how I did it, it was a long trial and error process, plus plenty of googling.
Hacking WP theme is really challenging, there’s a different php file for each section. I vote for blogger on this one, their templates are much easier to be customized.
I hope it works fine because I really like the color and header image
I agree with you on all counts. WP is the better of the two, but could grab some of the nice things Blogger uses, but overall WP on your own host is the best combo.
I really like the new theme also, very easy on the eyes and very quick to load, kudos
Your new theme looks great. I like WP also, have a great weekend.