I have gone against my will, my view to have Linux running my computer life was the main priority with reinstall after reinstall on my PC and laptop, the Fujitsu Seimens Esprimo v5535 couldn’t get the wireless working correctly for me to use. The main desktop can’t even detect the hard drive during a Linux install, so I decided to try Windows 7 on the PC. Wow.
I must admit, I’m impressed, extremely impressed. I wasn’t this impressed with Ubuntu, Mint, XP or the worst software in the world; Vista. The speed on which the operating system has under it’s hood is refreshing and surprising to an extent, due to it looking a lot like it’s predecessor, which all of you know was sluggish and bloaty. 
Above screen shot shows Windows 7 Main desktop, click it to view it in a higher resolution. First of all that is most noticeable is the taskbar, or so it is now known as the ‘SuperBar’. It is nearly fully customizable with the icons for programs you wish to be there, for example: On my SuperBar I have Firefox 3 on the left, then Open Office 3, then Windows Messenger Live and lastly my Thunderbird email client. These programs are pinned there, while any icons that come after these (or before, you can re-arrange them by click and dragging) will be programs that are open or minimized, Internet Explorer 8 in this case.
No sidebar! Insanely nice and tidy right? “But I liked the gadgets!”, well you can still have them 
Right clicking the desktop and selecting ‘Gadgets’ will bring up a familiar window from the Vista Sidebar for controlling gadgets, except these are actually mounted on your desktop, use less resources and look neater. You also get more of your screen back 
Second screen shot shows the new ribbon featured Wordpad, which looks much better.
Last screenshot is showing a lovely background through two windows, my first thoughts on seeing the ‘Desktop Preview’ feature was “This is just going to make things slow and messy now.”, which is probably what you are thinking now if you haven’t tried this out already. Truth being, it is brilliant, simply hovering on the glass tab at the bottom right hand corner of your desktop will make all current active windows raise their transparency so you can see with through to the wallpaper.
Listing some more ‘notacable’ features or improvements above, I can quite safely say that this is a fantastic step in the right direction for Microsoft. I think they have learnt from Vista (apart from the different editions, which is utterly pointless, why can’t we just have one version of Windows 7 for everyone?) and listened to what customers what, as to trying to pump as much eye candy on the bloated OS as they possibly can.
It still is perhaps a marmite relationship, much so like Vista but Windows 7 really does have a better chance of sustaining the drop of users they are receiving at the moment with Apple and Linux taking Windows users away from the software giant. I recommend you try the release candidate, it is valid until early 2010 so why not?
Rich.
