The focus is indeed security, security, security! I think a lot of undue scaremongering is because many of the changes are deep in the inner workings of XP, so won't be immediately obvious to users. From what I can gather most of the software incompatibility issues are involved with net access and the enhanced firewall in SP2. I haven't installed the Service Release yet as I'm about to add a much needed new hard drive. But I'm looking forward to Outlook Express now allowing plain text email formatting. Also, at long last, I believe there's a customizeable Pop-Up blocker that's been added to IE which also blocks any automatic file downloads not initiated by mouse click. Yet another IE addon is a manager for Browser Helper Objects (BHOs) which will be great for all those who've beem pestered in the past by irksome apps which have taken malicious control in IE.