Personally, I don't consider Neptune to be a ditched project - much like LongHorn, the concepts that the UI/UX team put together eventually made their way into later products. It's my belief that the music activity center was turned into the media guide in Windows Media Player. The ideas and functionality that they wanted to present to users eventually made their way into a final OS design. If anything can be said of the aftermath of Neptune's demise, it's that Microsoft didn't really ditch the project. Granted, a lot changed between Neptune's version and the final use of the design - bits of the start page were merged with the start menu, and the rest of the features were pushed and pulled into other parts of the operating system. For what it's worth, what became of the activity centers existed all the way up through 2003 - the Help & Support center was effectively the destiny of the whole Activity Center design.
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