I have been rooted for a long time. About the only thing I do with root is use the wired tether app, Easy Tether and being rooted allows me to be able to use Root Explorer, Titanium Backup, the Terminal Emulator, and a few other apps that require the phone to be rooted.
I have Droid2 Bootstrapper which I use to make backups of my phone about once a week. That way if I screw up, I can restore the phone without having to flash the SBF to bet the phone back to the way it was on day one. It is much easier to Restore than flash.
I use Launcher pro plus for all the reasons that have mentioned in this thread. I really like the dock options the best. I have Live Home on the phone also and it is set up exactly like Launcher pro screen wise, except there are no dock options on Live Home that I can find yet. Live Home has very cool screen transitions, like turning a page in a book or the cubed transition that looks like you are turning a "block" from side to side, screen to screen. I wish that feature was in Launcher pro.
Launchers are varied and many and not one of them has all the features the you like in one package, but they have themes and icon packs you can download and work with.
ROM's? They have been explained to me as the engine under the hood, the operating system. As yet, I have not figured out why I need a different operating system or engine. That is, what specific benefit I would be getting by changing. The only thing I can "see" are the few pictures or screen shots of the ROM's, and I can find themes that look the same, so I feel no need to change.
As far as ROM's making battery life better and the phone faster, I get good battery life now and I do not think a different operation system is going to make the internet load any faster than it does now. Internet is the only thing I want to be fast.
As far as the bloat. Once you learn how Android is designed to work then you are not to concerned with the bloat because it will not slow the phone down or hog memory as so often cited in the forums. I am sure if you play games that require lots of resources, then yes, you might want a ROM that free's up RAM and tinkers with clock speeds.
