If you have not yet taken a look at the new "Administrative Praise" administrator template, you need to do so.   Yes, your admin control panel has templates too!  I've been using their AP2 template for a few weeks now, and it really does speed up the administration of a Joomla site.  It's not free, though.

Click here for a link to the demo.  Click here to go to the Joomla Praise home