New APIs have been created to do this. Third parties can leverage these APIs to create all sorts of task based extensions. First off, it wants to reassure people that Windows XP, based on the NT code base, is safe for consumers. But it also has to convince corporations that it s useful to upgrade from Windows 2000. Both are going to be pretty tough.
Consumers don t tend to upgrade.
They stick with whatever OS came on their computers. And corporations have to be given a strong business case to spend the dollars to upgrade. If I were Microsoft, I would really really push the Terminal Services integration. We at Stardock are going to upgrade all our workstations to WinXP specifically for that feature. Basically, it allows users to seamlessly go onto any other computer running Terminal Services and run applications and such with the application executing remotely.