It definitely looks better, but the new tab colouring makes more difficult to see which tab is active, inactive or modified. Luckily Soda UI solves this.

As someone who was always a huge fan of Soda, and is the creator of the new theme, thanks a lot for the kind words!

Seconding that, the new theme is wonderful. Now you just need to throw some money at Dan Perrera to let you use his version of the icon - http://dribbble.com/shots/311515-A-Sublime-Text-2-Icon-that-....

I quite like the icon by Nate Beaty that's listed as tip #2 here: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-and-tips/sublime-tex...

I actually kind of hate that one, ha. It's a little too...on the nose, we'll say, with the code in the background and the tabs at the bottom. I like my icons a bit more subtle, personally.

Another great one (imo!) is here, by Adam Kiss: http://dribbble.com/shots/378184-Unofficial-Sublime-Text-2-I.... A different take than the rectangular look, reminds me of Ommwriter a bit.

I agree, I like the new default theme a lot better. Good work! I updated the original post.

dumb question but is there literally a theme called "new theme" or are you just talking about the new default sublimetext theme?

There is a brand new theme, called simply Default, that ships with Sublime Text 2. See:

http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-2-buil...

If you've customised your theme already, you'll need to go into Global Settings > User and either remove the theme line or change it to:

  "theme": "Default.sublime-theme",