System and Dock preferences are there, along with a the Force Quit command, in case one of your programs freezes. It's more customizable than ever. Buttons can be added or removed from the toolbar. Proper labels for Finder windows are back, so you know when you're in your Applications folder, for example, without having to double-check. With a single click of the mouse, the toolbar can be hidden and the Finder will work more or less like the one of old, where you double click on folders to spawn more Finder windows.
Organization is out, clutter is in.
It now gets pop-up contextual menus. Click your mouse on any icon and hold, and up pops a menu that relates to that item. If you click on a folder icon in the Dock, you get a hierarchical menu showing its contents, along with sub-menus, so you can explore what lies beneath that folder. Yep, it's back. I had a chance to play with the most recent Mac OS X version during an Apple press briefing, and I wasn't able to locate any way to configure the clock, but Apple says it'll be there when Mac OS X is released.