You might find this article useful: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=22006&page=2 Windows 7 beats XP and Vista in almost every category. For both low end and high end PCs.
I am going to wait to buy a new PC with Win 7 rather than trying to upgrade - my poor PC is overwhelmed with junk - no need trying to double up on problems with an upgrade.
Just installed Win7..Its really gr8, much better than Vista which I had earlier. Not so much changes in the look and feel but performance is real good.
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Have you considered a Mac? Ever since OSX came out however many years ago I've been extremely impressed by it's capabilities. I know it sounds cliche, but with Windows I was always having to update my spyware and antivirus definitions. I spent as much time making sure the OS wasn't going to be susceptible to a bug as I was actually using the computer. With the Mac, I just get to use the computer without worrying about any of that crap. When I need to SSH to my web servers, the SSH client is built in... no need to download Putty or SecureCRT or anything. It's built on *NIX, so it's uber stable, but has a nice usable GUI on top of it with plenty of software choices out there. Maybe not your best choice if you're a PC gamer, but I have game consoles for when I want to play games. The Mac is my workhorse. (And for the Anti-Apple crowd, I'm right there with you when you're complaining about OS9 and before. I used to hate Macs as well. I'm only a fan of the OSX platform.)
10 year old product vs unreleased product. Seriously , i hate the speed comparison, its okay for it to be, somewhat slower then vista in my opinion, by the fact that when XP came out, Pentium 4 was the major player, and now i5 is gaining dominance, nothing sold today is under 2 cores.
driver support was actually better on vista, automatic detection and installation, and file system?.... also wrong, what file system problems?. bloatness was the main problem, and instability, too things which XP was star on. Win 7 if anything, is streamlined,optimized, and improved vista, not to mention its got a few new tricks of its own, network management is revamped and is totally awesome now, and way easier, the thing that detects what device you plugged in and has tons of features for it is pretty neat, not to mention stuff like Ease of use, toolbar etc.