Well the user interface your system uses is surely a key factor in choosing your operating system - it doesn't matter how advanced/secure/fast/whatever your operating system is, if you don't like the means you have to talk to it, then you don't like the operating system. If that weren't the case, then surely no one would ever have used Windows 95/98 - they'd all be on Linux.Thats my start menu and close screen, nothing like telly tubby land. I fail to see how you can avoid what is a superiour operating system just because of the graphics, all of which can be changed with ease.
But anyway, I wouldn't necessarily say XP is inherently superior to Windows 2000. As released, Windows XP was little more than Windows 2000 with new hardware support provided through drivers which can be added to Windows 2000 anyway, a cute new user interface, and a few 'helper' applets to make Win2K more accessible to the home user. In technical terms, there is nothing in Windows XP (32 bit) which can't be supported by the Windows 2000 codebase.