Well, this is certainly the Office 12 and Vista PDC.  Enough has been said about Vista everywhere else, but the Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly Avalon) is interesting.   It’s going to change the way we build UI’s for desktop apps for years to come.  And those pesky designers are going to have quite a bit more to do with it.  Fortunately, they’ve got some cool tools to help them out and to help Designers and Developers work together.