Since they're mostly the same, they can't be that much less elegant.

So far I've seen two more interesting approaches:

Namecoins add names.
Solidcoins add faster transctions and less upwards volatility-of-difficulty.

Both ideas have inherent value. That's rather important; we don't just invent a new currency. Anybody can do that. (Look up Norton I, self-styled Emperor of San Francisco, for a particularly interesting example.)

We want to do new things here which we couldn't do before.
One can send money and exchange it for different money with any bank. That's not the point of Bitcoins.
Neither is the ability to mint your own money. That's a nice feature, for now, but it'll stop working (i.e. "generate enough coins to offset the power bill") soon enough.