Long a tradition in software development, Easter eggs are little surprises programmers hide in the software for users to find and enjoy. Well-known examples include a picture of Silicon Valley hidden in Apple's system software and men in bathing suits buried within Maxim's SimCopter.

The handful of known Easter eggs in Windows 2000 were recently stripped out at the request of Microsoft's developers and large accounts, said Michael Desmond, author of the Windows 2000 Professional Bible.

"I was pretty disappointed to see them go," said Desmond. "But they don't fit with the suit-and-tie set."

According to Desmond, the presence of five or six Easter eggs in Windows 2000 became a topic of a heated discussion on a beta forum during the final weeks of product testing.

While some beta testers vigorously defended the Easter eggs, Microsoft reportedly removed them.

Despite the countless Microsoft employees milling about the Windows 2000 exhibit hall, the company could not provide a representative to confirm or deny the removal of the Easter eggs.

But according to several Microsoft engineers who wished to remain anonymous, a company vice president ordered the Easter eggs removed because government accounts were wary of the extraneous code.

Desmond said those removed were mainly innocuous variations to the system’s built-in screensavers. One Easter egg displayed the names of volcanos, another inserted teapots into a particular design.

In addition to the Easter eggs, Microsoft also removed a hidden feature found in the previous version of Windows NT that helped users hide games from the boss and other unwelcome snoops. Previously, the toolbar icon for a game window that had been hastily minimized resembled a spreadsheet icon. In Windows 2000, the game icon is displayed in the toolbar.

Companies do not typically sanction Easter eggs. In fact, very few admit to them for fear or introducing bugs or spoiling the code.

The depersonalization of software seems to be an industry trend. Apple recently ended its traditional practice of including the names of programmers in its software, a kind of credit roll recognizing the creators.

"It is very prohibitionist in a way only Americans can be," said Desmond, who lives in Burlington, Vermont. "It stripped out all the fun."

However, Desmond said, it’s possible that Microsoft has yet to find all of the Easter eggs in Windows 2000.

After all, it contains 30 million lines of code.