"clarity and confidence" is the new stuff that will be making sure you don't do anything bad on your PC, like copy cd's, make mp3's from cd's, copy/backup DVDs etc ...
BTW, you can recreate all the visual affects in longhorn/vista ising Stardock applications ( Object Desktop, DesktopX etc.. ) checkout
http://www.wincustomize.com/ there are tons of longhorn stuff that you can use. You can also install an entire suite that will change evrything to longhorn while still maintaining XP Pro and not have the new watchdog stuff.