Just downloaded beta 2 of Java 1.5. And there are plenty small things that's noticeable (by browsing the documentation, I haven't tried any of these in code yet):
On Windows, it installs itself into "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0" and "C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0". It's no longer j2sdk. I never liked that name.
The System.getenv(String) method is no longer deprecated.
JFrame.add() works again. It took them seven years to do it!
The new javac -Xlint option produce warnings for legal but potentially problematic constructs.
There's a new tool called apt. Guess what it does. (Not getting new packages for your Debian distribution of GNU/Linux!)
IndexedPropertyChangeEvent is finally added to the JavaBeans API.
The java.lang package grew quite a bit. New members include Appendable, Iterable, Readable, Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler interfaces and Enum, ProcessBuilder, StringBuilder classes.
Now, is it too much to ask for a JFrame that shows up where Windows (or GNOME or KDE or CDE or Motif or whatever) would have it show up instead of the top-left corner?