Windows 7 is absolutely the very best OS that MS has produced. It does all that I need it to do, with little maintenance to keep it running smooth (I have paid utilities, such as Perfect Disk 12.5, that helps with this). It was an adjustment from XP, the OS that I had used for many years before taking the plunge with Windows 7 & 64 bit computing. I have no regrets towards either.
In fact, when Windows 7 was released in 2009, there seemed to be more 32 vs 64 bit & 64 vs 32 bit install topics than Windows 7 itself. That is exactly why I hope that XP is no longer supported when 128 bit CPU's are released. We don't need 3 different CPU's to bicker over at the same time.
I gave Windows 7 the highest rating on the voting, because after 2 years of running Windows 7, I could no longer rollback to XP for everything. Especially conducting transactions. If there was no Windows 7, I'd use either Linux Mint or Ubuntu for shopping & other transactions. The one thing that I wished that Windows 7 had done better on, and is being addressed with the next version, is virtualization. Windows Virtual PC with XP Mode could have been done better. First off, a simple registry modification has to be made within XP Mode to give it a True Color (24 bit) option. Secondly, and there are no options, one cannot use 2 (or more) cores for VM's. Third, Windows Virtual PC only allows certain Linux installs. It doesn't allow for the popular ones, such as Ubuntu & Mint.
One other thing, as another poster above mentioned, is the RAM issue. Even with several items disabled at startup, my desktop idles at almost 50% of my available RAM (4GB DDR2). That's with nothing running but virus/malware/firewall protection, and whatever services that Windows depends upon to run. On my notebook, that jumps to over 2GB, but being that there's 8GB DDR3 10666 RAM installed, that's not an problem.
Windows 7 is a great OS, and hopefully the next version will be even better, especially with the RAM usage & virtualization options. Also, it's my belief that Windows 7 will be the next XP. In that when the time comes (& it will), many users will cling to the OS just as they are with XP now. The true die hards won't let go until the wheels fall off. Windows 7 is simply put, that good of an OS, one that has provided for 28 months a great experience, with many years to follow. But just don't expect Windows 7 support to last for a total of 13 years, like XP will. Blame that one on Vista.
Cat