All these things that I have done

The quick answer is that ASP .Net indeed has nothing whatever to do with ASP. The only reason for the similarity in names is marketing—Microsoft want you to assume that since you know ASP it will be easier to use ASP .Net than, say, PHP.

ASP .Net is better than ASP for any nontrivial project—it allows for the app to be decomposed in to resable objects (called web controls) each responsible for part of the page
in the same way windows controls are responsible for part of a window in an old-style windows application.

In similar vein, ADO .Net is entirely unlike ADO. I am told that it is better once you get used to it. I have not tried it yet though.

—Damian