There are a number of
little appearance changes that Microsoft made to Win2000. Many of
them are geared toward novice users. In fact, many may find that
Win2000 is more geared towards novices than Windows 98.

The first thing you will
notice is some little things that make Windows pretty. The menus
fade in. The mouse cursor has a little shadow behind it. You can, of
course, turn these features off, but they make it look nice, eating

up a little processing power in the process. One of the funniest
things I noticed was the little pop-up dialog box near the start
button. It actually told me to click the Start button to access my
programs and showed me how to click the mouse.

Another thing you will
notice is that Microsoft juggled some things around and made the
Control Panel the main area of control for the operating system.
This way, there is one place to go for any change you want to make -
from your desktop wallpaper to network ID’s. Folder Options has been
moved to the Control Panel. The Printers and Scheduled Tasks folders
have been moved from My Computer to the Control Panel.

You

will also notice a change in the Device Manager. Instead of just
seeing it as a tab under System, as in Win9x, you will find it
listed in context wherever applicable. Go into Sounds and
Multimedia, Scanners and Cameras, Mouse, etc. and click on either
the Hardware or Advanced tabs, you will see that part of device
manager that applies. To get to the regular Device Manager, click on
System, then click the Hardware tab, then you will see the button
for Device Manager. From within the Device Manager, you can easily
Uninstall a device or simply disable it. Many Control Panel options
also now have a Troubleshooting option that will help one track down
the source of many problems.

The Start Menu operates
basically the same as Win9x, but it is a little more customizable.
You can toggle whether certain features are included in the Start
Menu and you have full customization of what everything is called,
etc. The Expand My Documents on the Start Menu option allows you,
for example, to access every document and image on your hard drive,

as long as they are in the My Documents folder.

Now, along with these
aesthetic changes, there are some code changes and features that
make this not only a nice looking OS, but also a pretty stable one.