Sorry Matt, but your examples are not compelling and my mind is not blown.
The things you list come down to personal preference and user familiarity. I can accomplish all the things you list with a minimum of effort. Everything I need is right here within a couple of clicks:
I also took this with a system feature and saved it to my desktop. I also could have saved it as a .PNG, .TIFF, .JPG, etc.
I can change my IP address, DNS server, add static routes, switch between network adapters on the fly, and no reboots required.
I'll give you the crappy bundled apps though. Vista should fix this.
ianc