I agree with the others that you don't actually want our opinions -- your mind is already made up. You hate Vista, we get it. Windows 7 has its roots in Vista, so what do you think it is more similar to -- Vista or the very old XP?
That all said, I run a dual boot setup with Vista x64 and XP x86. It would probably be better to run XP x64, since I have 6GB RAM. But I figured, what the heck, if I get some application that doesn't work in Vista x64, I can always get it to run in XP x86. To be honest with you, I've booted up into XP probably 3 times in the last year -- to get SP3 and just keep XP maintained.
As it is right now, I see absolutely no reason to run XP if your machine can run Vista. Sure, if it's old then XP will run better on it, like my 1.6GHz single core laptop.
Now, you wanted to hear about Windows 7. I have only been able to run this on my spare PC -- much slower than my main rig. (Main rig is a Q6600 @ 3.24GHz, 6GB RAM, and 2 drive RAID0 OS partition [with weekly backups to an eSATA drive]; secondary is an X2 4200+ with 2GB RAM, and old ATA 120GB drive). That said, my spare PC was running Vista before and I have to say that Windows 7 appears to be faster. It also installs in under 10GB, which I thought was pretty good. If you're going to complain about bloatware and all that nonsense, I'll just point you to Newegg who sells 1500GB drives for $130. You have no rational argument with HD capacity and prices as they are to say that 10GB (less, actually) is too much for an OS. I have games that are over 10GB (Grid is 10.1GB).
The changes over Vista made with Windows 7 are mostly minor tweaks, with few things that are drastic.
As you have heard about the User Account Control (UAC) in Vista, yes it was annoying. But you may not have heard that it takes about 10 seconds + 1 reboot to disable those messages and warnings. This, however, ruins the purpose of UAC -- to prevent spyware from being installed and compromising the OS. Windows 7 takes UAC to a more logical level, offering levels of control. Yes, theres still the option to turn it off, but I have it setup as the lowest level. Basically, the default is much like Vista where it warns you whenever anything trys to install. You can change it, like I did, to warn you only when you did not initiate an install. So, if I install something I don't get a warning about "Are you sure you want to install XYZ?" -- but if that program tries to install something else it will warn me about that. So far, this has not been intrusive whatsoever. I think this is a good level of control that they have done, enough to keep malicious software out without displaying so many warnings that users mindlessly allow everything.
The final change that I really really liked in Windows 7 was the introduction of Libraries.
Here's my setup, and I'm aware this is extreme compared to most users -- but we are on Anandtech, so I can't say it's not uncommon around here:
2x250GB in a RAID0 array with OS's
4x320GB in a RAID5 array for storage
1x500GB eSATA for backup of OS, etc.
1x1TB Firewire for more storage, etc.
With Libraries, you can setup multiple folders to appear in a library. So, if I have music on the RAID5 and the Firewire, I dump both those folders into a library and then I can just go to the library and I get all the files in both those folders. I designate one to be the primary folder, so when I copy to a library everything goes to the same place. Or if you have downloads all over the place, same thing. I think this is a much more intuitive way of organizing data than having 5 partitions with redundancies.
The taskbar is also a bit different. You can pin applications to it. So, instead of having a quick launch bar with, say, IE and Libraries you have IE and Libraries pinned to the taskbar. When you click IE, it starts up the app and expands itself by showing the text like it does in every other Windows version. When you download a file and close out the browser the icon takes on the progress bar of the download. And all these pinned apps have a drop-down menu (well, it opens up, but whatever) where it stores your most frequently accessed places (sites, folders, files, whatever is logically relevant) and makes shortcuts to them from there. These same shortcuts appear in the start menu next to every application, whether you pin it to the taskbar or not.
Oh, and Windows Media Player 12. I'm sure you probably use VLC or MPC since you seem like that kind of person, but I've never had a problem playing *any* video files if I have ffdshow tryouts & Haali Media Splitter installed with WMP. I like WMP, it does everything I need it to. The only thing I don't use WMP for is music, I choose Winamp for that. WMP takes up too much of the screen just for music browsing. (The same goes with iTunes). Hell, even with Winamp I never use the Media Library (too much screen). Instead, I organize my music into folders by band, and then subfolders by album. Or, better yet, I create M3U files for each album and store those in 26 folders for the first letter of each band and keep that as a menu on the taskbar. All I have to do is open up the playlists from the taskbar, go to the letter, band, and pick an album. Very useful thing there.
There, you wanted an opinion -- you got one. Probably won't change your mind, and I honestly don't care. I've been using Vista since day 1 and loved it. I see no reason except for outdated hardware as to why you should be on XP instead of Windows Vista, and especially with Windows 7. Windows 7 only improves over Vista (I bet you're thinking, "How could it do any worse?"), and I really enjoyed using it. I'm waiting to try out the x64 edition of Windows 7 on my main rig.
FWIW, the only application I found incompatible with Vista was old versions of Norton Ghost and Nero (6.x I believe). These are easily solved by upgrading -- shocking, I'm sure. Roxio was initially incompatible, I believe with Vista, but this is easily fixed by changing to Nero, which is clearly superior anyways. Also, initial reports of gaming perfomance being decreased in Vista vs XP are no longer current. In general, Vista gaming performance is as good or better than XP. Plus, Vista has DX10 which actually is used now with DX10 cards and games -- something that was not available en masse when Vista first debuted.
