The issue of front vs. rear ports has always puzzled me somewhat. For desktop purposes I think rear ports is probably the way to go, because the way things are generally set up, it would just be cleaner. For rack-mounted switches I think front ports is really the only choice.
For example, take note of my home networking setup below. The cable modem (left top, gray/black) has all networking and power interfaces in the back, and LED indicators in the front. It appears very clean, as does the Netgear RT314 (blue, combination Internet Gateway Router and 4-port 10/100 switch), which is set up in the same fashion. The Nexland WaveBase and Compex DSR2216 (purple and gray respectively) which have network interfaces on the front appear significantly more cluttered and obtrusive (despite my best efforts to keep the cables neatly managed). I'll try to remember to take a picture of my office's network setup, which utilizes nicely organized, rack-mounted hardware and cable management systems.
Although with cables in the back, it's probably equally, if not more messy than if they were int he front, I can't see them, so like they say, "out of sight, out of mind."
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