None of those things couldn't be added with a service pack, and several were. XP and 2000 are basically the same OS. I have no idea what you mean by 'better in

None of those things couldn't be added with a service pack, and several were. XP and 2000 are basically the same OS. I have no idea what you mean by 'better internet support' so I can't say anything about that. Remote desktop did exist in 2k, it was called Terminal Services. All XP did was bring a stripped down server to the client. GDI+ is available as a patch for Windows 2000. There was nothing preventing MS from releasing ClearType on 2k, they just didn't. Media Player 9 was released on Windows 2000. USB 2.0 and FireWire 400/800 are supported in Windows 2000, they're just device drivers. A little googling seems to indicate they were added in Service Pack 3 or 4. XP wasn't like Vista where they changed the driver model or made changes to the authentication system with UAC. XP was just addons to 2000, holding back things like the firewall and the last patch to DirectX 9 were artificial limitations to make XP seem worth the upgrade.