Allowing user to pick the color options (from a palette) would be much preferred to eight options I don’t like.
Also, allowing user to set default column width / number of columns is preferable to having the dashboard select for me (and change the columns without asking when I resize my browser).
Even more than all that, however, I used to show 10 recent comments on my dashboard Activity; now it’s just 5 and I can’t see a way to change that.