Jim: "The drop-shadow might be a bit much to ask, though"
No problem here - you can simple cheat and make the drop shadow part of the destop as drfish suggested. Actually the drop shadow of the windows program bar on top of the screenshot is done that way.
But there is another option for adding drop shadows to windows. The freeware program called YzShadow is really cool - you should give it a try.
you can get it for example here:
http://www.freewebs.com/dj_sol/yzsdw109.zip
:-)