Windows 7: Windows 7, please enlighten me with your opinions on this to be released OS

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In reply to: Windows 7, please enlighten me with your opinions on this to be released OS by Lee Koo (ADMIN) 

Sorry it's so long, but I made it a point to try to answer all of your questions.

MY THOUGHTS:
After being fed up with various Vista-related issues with my Asus G1sn (a notebook computer), I decided to install a MSDNAA (One of Microsoft's deals with university students) copy of Windows XP. While there, I noticed they also had Windows 7 (this was after the final download date on the normal beta).
Though I haven't done any actual speed benchmarking (even if I felt like wasting time on it, the EULA says no benchmarking), I must say that W7 seems much faster than XP and Vista. It boots faster, wakes up faster, shuts down faster, transfers files faster, and finds a WIFI connection faster.
It also has much less annoying notifications than XP and Vista. In XP, I am constantly being bombarded with info balloons telling me things that likely don't even matter at the time (like my WI-FI signal when I'm doing offline work), but W7 manages to consolidate most notification-area popups into a single item, allowing you to choose when to read them. W7 also has much less UAC obstructions than Vista does. However, W7 likes to default secondary HDDs to read-only, but that can be fixed by editing its properties.
In terms of drivers, I found W7 to be very easy. ASUS doesn't like to provide notebook drivers for much other than the preloaded OS. I spent a long time looking for all my drivers to use on XP, and never could get my NVIDIA ones to work on Linux. All but my Realtek soundcard drivers installed without a hitch. The sound issue was fixed by running its installer in compatibility mode for Vista, and the sound works fine.
MicroTrend office client antivirus works well on W7, and I have heard that Avast does, too.

FEATURES:
W7 has the Start menu searchbar, which I liked from Vista. It has a wider taskbar for those of you who can't see well. QuickLaunch and the window selector on the taskbar were integrated in an interesting way. IE8 is sluggish and incompatible with many websites as expected, but FF3 works on W7. Wordpad had a facelift and looks kind of like MS Word 2007 by using the Ribbon interface (which, although I didn't like at first, I find to be more intuitive now) and supports OOF and OOXML formats. Paint also looks fancier and more useful, also adding the Ribbon. However, I prefer Paint.Net (available on CNET, I believe). "Shut Down" is the default shutdown option now (go figure). The sidebar isn't restricted to a bar (or the side) anymore. There's a "Show desktop" button, for those of you who don't like using the Windows+D hotkey. Many more features than I feel like listing.

SYSTEM REQs:
If you can run Vista, W7 should be no problem. I find it generally uses half the resources (especially RAM) of what Vista took. I don't recall actually reading Microsoft's recommended specs for W7, but I think they are lower for W7 than for Vista. It definitely seems to run more smoothly.

UPGRADE:
I won't be upgrading to W7 when it's released. I find it to be a nice piece of software, but unless I can get it cheap as a student, I will stick with XP (and maybe reinstall Vista if I absolutely must). I probably won't get it unless it comes prepackaged with something or really cheap. Since I just bought my notebook last year, I don't think I'll get W7 as a prepackaged deal for a few years.