As for the Mac OS X Network Control Panel, I can sum up my feelings about it this way: I love it!

With OS X I feel comfortable taking my PowerBook into any networking situation and being able to connect quickly and easily.

There's only one situation where current OS X technology seems to come up short networking-wise. There isn't a PPTP client yet that allows us to use Point to Point Tunneling Protocol on a specific type of secure network. Even then, sometimes we can use ssh via the Terminal Application to get the job done. But a better solution would be straight-up PPTP access.

Hopefully we'll see that soon ...