Your propaganda is dated

[muzzy]

I thought windows stores image thumbnails in alternate streams for each file. At least my windows 2000 does. So, you say it's new to XP, that would explain why I haven't seen them. I just have to wonder why they're in a separate file now and not in ADS. Heck, thumbnails are supposed to be metadata, that's exactly what ADS is there for. I wonder why the design was changed :o

[WMD]

Go to Control Panel > Folder Options > View and uncheck "hide protected system files."  Then you can see them.  I don't, however, remember 2000 having them (I have it installed on this computer, next to Linux).