Shaders in WPF? Do you find them useful?

One of the most exciting things about the new .NET3.5 SP1 is definitely the ability to use Shaders (Pixel Shaders only).

As a beginner in that area, I am actively searching for information in blog posts, DirectX documentation, etc. Interestingly enough, a lot of people are keen on the idea of using those, but demos and even hints on possible applications are hard to find. There are a couple of "default" examples, a ShaderPad I find pretty useful, but that's it, no advanced examples what-so-ever. Additionally, I found a couple of cool examples (like those posted on Addam Kinney's blog), but those are NOT shader demos.

At the last couple of conferences, MS guys showed a couple of exciting demos, which deal with geometry morphing (see the link to Addam Kinney's blog). Those will most probably look awesome when vertex/geometry shaders support is added to the .NET framework. Currently, I find them CPU-intensive, which limits business application.

Back to the Pixel Shaders, an exciting feature is the ability to run the code directly on the CPU (instead of the GPU). That is a nice feature, allowing computers with older/out-of-date video cards to preserve "the touch of the shader". But usually computers with old video cards are also old, having weak CPUs as well. I wonder if those effects should be run on older PCs at all.

If you have answers to some of those questions, found good shader examples, or just want to express your opinion, feel free to comment on this blog post.