After reading the 63 replies so far it does seem that people in general do not want any sound in their OS. I find this to be an odd position to take when sound is something that can enhance an OS greatly.

When I click a button in an application or a link on a site, having a very short click sound helps me know the click worked. Without the sound you only know when the desired result of the click happens and many times I'll be rushing and click things, only to discover it was more of a click drag. There I sit waiting for something to happen and end up having to click again.

Problems like this don't seem great on their own but when you marry a very well thought out sound scheme that is designed to aid usability, I don't see how a majority of users would want to turn all that off.

I suspect this is more to do with past sound schemes colouring peoples judgements as I have to admit, the sound schemes Microsoft has put out in the past seem to be aimed at small children, with no real thought into the benefit sound can bring to usability.

I created my own sound scheme that covers system events and all the applications I have that allow sound and everyone that has heard it has asked if they could have it too. For instance, when you plug in a USB device into one of my boxes, instead of the generic beep sound, you hear a female voice announce smoothly that "device connected" or when a burn completes, the same voice announces "burn successful" or unsucessful, whichever the case may be. A lot of the events are spoken because they are heard rarely, but the sounds you hear a lot, those are strictly effects, but well thought out too. Maximising for instance triggers a sound of a (admitedly heavily modified) electric car window hitting its close point. A soft leather clunk that conjures up the idea that something connected nicely. When you restore down the opposite kind of sound you would expect is triggered.

All of the sounds are quiet so even at fairly high volume levels they are acceptable and at normal volume levels, I would say they really aid usability. A final example, a friend who was trying out the maximising stuff, kept on repeating this on windows, clunk, click which suggested it had given the function a more sticky feel. I got a real kick out of that.

I've planned on releasing the sound scheme as a piece of freeware but so far haven't found anywhere to upload them without losing my bandwidth lol.

I just hope that more thought goes into marrying the kind of sounds you think you should be hearing with events rather than something that sounded great as a clip in a studio, totally unrelated to the events.