I hear ya, Tony.

Back when I was running 2000 Pro, I tried Window Blinds, and Desktop X, and they looked great, but were both a little too slow and buggy for me. I have since upgraded to XP, and am really happy with it. Not quite as slick looking as OS X, but it's about as close as you can get on the Win32 platform. And a lot more stable then 2000 was with a shell.

Desktop X was my favorite of the ones I've tried, but You might also want to check out Lightstep, or Nextstart. I've never tried either of those two, but they have some of the best looking desktops I've ever seen, and a ton of skins.

If you want more info, check out some of these sites:

A great Windows Tweaking site:
WinCustomize

Online artist community, with a ton of skins:
Deviant Art

Another cool site, but currently under construction:
skinz.org