At last, the beast that was Vista has gone forever!

Upgraded Vista Home to 7 Home yesterday. Took the upgrade option which took about 2½ hours to complete.

So far, very please with it. It does run smoother and the hard drive isn't constantly indexing any more. I can actually open a few apps without getting any mouse stutter for the first time since XP.

The interface is very similar to Vista but the task bar has changed. When you open a program it puts an icon on the taskbar. If you use this program a lot you can opt to pin it to the taskbar. You can also move icons around into different orders. The desktop link has now moved to the far right. You can hover to see the desktop through translucent open windows or click it to go back to the desktop. If you have for example 3 browser windows open the icons stack sideways like a deck of cards. Hovering over the icons displays thumbnails of each page. You can select which page to go to or actually close pages from here.

The file system is taking a bit of getting used to. It's introduced Libraries for photos, music, etc. In my home folder I have additional folders for things like web site, software, drivers, but these were not visible. In Vista there was a home folder that contained everything. I have found that to access this I have had to link it to the favorites area. I noticed that adding a link to these areas actually adds the folder, not a shortcut so I nearly accidentally deleted a load of stuff yesterday. I'll have to play around with it for a few days/weeks to get the idea of how it ticks.

All the reviews have agreed that Win7 is far better than XP.

I'll wait till next year or beyond and SP1. My XP PC does all I need of it and as a dual core (AMD 4400+) is not that sloppy.

It's the compatibility that worries me. I remember having to buy a new printer and scanner when I upgraded to XP from Win95. Plus some of my older apps no longer installed.