Office 2003 toolbar buttons ugly

Office 2003
WinXP
Dell Inspiron 4001 laptop

I just upgraded to Office 2003 from Office 2000 (WHY do I spend money for
cosmetic changes???)

Anyway, my custom-made buttons in the Toolbar have become very unsightly. As a
simple example, two parallel black lines, each a pixel wide (one small square
in the Button Editor), will appear in two thicknesses in the Button itself.
Lettering looks very primitive.

The graphics on my Dell are otherwise exellent -- icons, fonts, dialog boxes,
photos, etc. Is it simply that MS has not bothered to upgrade its Button
Editor to keep up with changes in other graphic functionality?

For reference, I use Windows Classics appearance. I tried Windows XP
appearance; this merely made the buttons look different, but the basic problem
remained.

Thanks for any help.

Jay