Wow, multiple desktops! And it's only 2002! thanks bill...

The right hand lancher thingy actually looks pretty funky, but also a complete waste of screen space. Basically it looks like it has partially the functionality of the start menu, plus some things that are kinda useless (holy shit big clock!)

Based on the "v" at the bottom I'd guess it's collapsable though. To be honest the l&f of the task bar look pretty cool IMHO, but they haven't gotten rid of the crayola look(tm).

Thumbs up for changing the start button colour to match the rest of the desktop theme. XP's green Start button seemed to be Microsoft's way of saying "We feel the public is not intelligent enough to understand the word Start on its own so we better colour it green also. It Still seems that Windows is getting to look more like the Mac every version.