I feel somewhat concerned ;)
Depending on what you're looking for, there are a lot of goodies you can add manually.
Here's a quick tutorial I had found a while ago. It's about Ubuntu 8.10 but it should still work.
Ubuntu uses a desktop environment called GNOME. The main rival of GNOME is called KDE. Check it out. (a quick youtube search of "KDE 4.3"). They are a bit different. KDE is very visually compelling, but is heavier than GNOME. GNOME is aimed at simplicity.
If you decide however to give KDE a try, you can install it over your Ubuntu box, (transforming it into Kubuntu). I could show you how to do it.
There are other desktop environments like Fluxbox or Xfce, but I don't think they would interest you. They are more aimed at providing light environments. (Xfce runs Compiz for less than 200 MB on my computer).