A long time mac fanboi,windows xp nLited gamer... and vista hater... I'm extremely pleased with the most recent Windows 7 Rc. file transfers are very fast, multitasking is much more snappy and seems very stable... after one week of use... and about 30 hours of gaming... I can say that im not only impressed... but i think i might actually buy a copy of windows for a change, lol.

i've installed it on 3 pc's now... including an old P4... and it runs as fast if not faster than xp... while still looking better than vista.

also, while they did add more features, it seems like they simplified much of the control panel and organized it better.

cons: it's not os x, it doesn't multitask as well as mac and it can't run finalcut. i can't run mail lol... i love mail

Yeah, Windows 7 is pretty fast and stable. Been using RC x86 since it's release.
I really hate having to say that I've fallen in love with windows again! There I said.

I agree. I also find Windows 7 a great OS.

I have to agree too. I even deleted Vista. Now using 7 as my primary OS, and love it.

That's the thing; 7 makes for a better tag-team OS for Hacks (or even real Macs via BC) than Vista. Chameleon 2 RC1 supports chain-boots of 7 nicely.

And while 7 doesn't support FCP or Mail (quite honestly, I would rather run Entourage than Mail; however, I prefer Outlook mostly to Entourage), not even Leopard can run GalCiv2 Ultimate Edition (not even with CrossOver Games), so I need 7 (preferably) for that.

All those points aside, MS is sp paranoid about people stealing their OS- no ext. HD installation, resetting (rearming windows) when upgrading to a diff. HD or CPUs.
I own a legal copy of every OS they create since Windows 3, NT...etc.. Yet I hate their attitude and I wish Linux and OS X will take them down. I only recently switched to OS X because of OSX86 but I have have always liked OS X since its debut a years back. I even liked it more when S. Jobs announced the switch to Intel platform. I don't think he did it for the love of Intel or their manufacturing capacity (Mac with only 5% market share), he did it for the same reason that I can write this response on the OSX86 machine. I can't buy a real Mac because they are priced out of my budget. Maybe some day I'll own a real Mac. But for now, I own a real Mac OS.
Windows 7 is great. But it took MS 7 years to copy Apple. What's wrong with this picture?
Well, I offer you this analogy- General Motors, Inc.. Nobody could even fathom (never in their own mind) that they would go down one day. Hehe, I hope they never recover unless they change their attitude.
PS: I feel and have all the sympathy for the GM workers. They are the most productive auto workers but they are just unlucky to have a bad boss.

Personally I don't get what the big deal is. I put Windows 7 x64 on my machine 4 days ago, and so far it seems much more like Vista than it seems different from Vista. Sure a few elements got a visual facelift, but I'm not really seeing vast speed improvements, and I've yet to stumble across any "gotta have" new features that would compel me to upgrade from Vista Ultimate x64

anyone with a little more time spent playing around with Win7 mind filling me in on what exactly I'm supposed to be so impressed with?

I switched to Windows 7 when daemon tools finally been compatible. I think its much faster than XP/Vista and has better multitasking options to get the most out of your computer. Windows 7 FTW!!!

I'm typing this on a Win7 x64 7100 laptop. This is the OS I put on whatever I can't Hackintosh to my satisfaction (i.e. pretty much all laptops) (yes I said all laptops -- I don't consider an OSX86 install with non-working audio/LAN/sleep/restart/wifi "satisfying") (there I said it).

Win7 is an excellent OS, miles ahead of Vista and even XP. Hopefully Orbit30's PlusPatch won't screw the pooch and allow this beta to expire next March. I have it running flawlessly on several machines and everyone's extremely happy with it.

The key to making Win7 great is deboning it properly -- go into Control Panel and disable all the popup messages, Action Center messages, User Action Control, all that nonsense designed to keep office drones and grannies everywhere safe from errant keystrokes. Once you strip Win7 of all the nags, it actually runs extremely well. Very enjoyable and logical OS, not quite Leopard but easily the best MS has ever produced. I am happier working in a Mac environment and the apps especially are what make that environment what it is, but I could easily live on this Win7 RC build and not feel limited. That's saying a hell of a lot, given what a clusterf*ck Vista has been.

I can't believe any company led by an ass-hat like Ballmer could produce an OS this excellent, but it is excellent. And the added pressure it now puts on Apple is a good thing -- now we have a fair fight again, which can only mean Apple will work even harder to blow our minds the next go-round.

Add me to the group of people who don't see the huge improvement in Windows 7 over Vista that everybody talks about. I mean I like the new taskbar and the home group thing, but what else is new? The 'run XP in a virtual machine' is not..

Vista was running fine for me - at least after I found out that it wasn't a good idea to have AVG's resident shield running at the same time as Windows Defender. If Windows 7 is faster than Vista, I haven't seen it yet.

I know there are supposed to be fundamental changes under the hood, but to the average user Windows 7 is Vista SP3 with another name.

It's pretty much just a refinement on Vista.

Snow Leopard FTW

I agree. Windows 7 is what Vista should have been. It is a layer of polish both at the GUI level and underneath which should be no suprise considering how quickly they developed it.

The big question that I have is cost. I have a full Vista Ultimate retail package sitting right here in front of me and I remember how much $$$ that cost. In fact, it was twice what I've ever paid for an Apple OS.

I just read that Snow Leopard is going to be a $29 upgrade for Leopard users.

Now lets see how much MS charges for the upgrade to the equivilent level of 7.

Bravo Apple

Not only the cost of having already paid for a $200 for Vista x64 Ultimate, but from what I've read they've removed the Ultimate Extras like DreamScene! So I'd be paying extra $$ to lose one of the coolest features new to Vista...

As for the (lack of) speed increase, I'm wondering if it's because my machine is already so fast its not going to see much gain, if all the real increases are going to be seen by people running on older or lower end machines complaining about Vista being such a resource hog

I've been using the x86 version of Windows 7 on my Wind U100, and I'm very impressed with it. With 2GB of RAM, it runs leagues better than Vista. I love seeing Task Manager use up 1.12GB at startup, and then suddenly drop that footprint back down to 683MB. Vista always floated around 983MB when it was done.

now running on windows7 on 7 pc's... and 4 laptops (including my friends')

it's found every single driver the first time even on the x64 realease example the Hp touch sensitive volume and mdeia controls, and an asus with facial recognition... and even the Creative x64 drivers for my sound card were auto installed. not a single issue with any installs before, durring, and so far after.

Only thing about 7 right now, and this goes for all beta software, drivers for it can sometimes lack. But again, it's beta software, so something like this can be expected easily. Also, ashamed to see that Microsoft still have not fixed the problems with ati chipsets running a hard drive on an ide channel.