Microsoft has put out a winner this time. I have been running Windows 7 since the first beta. It runs perfectly on my old 1.6 ghz celeron notebook with 2 gigs of ram. Vista on the same machine was a horrid experience(yes Vista is that bad). The conventional wisdom is you wait for the first service pack. That has been true in the past(Vista not withstanding.). While Vista has had two service packs it’s still terribly slow. Windows 7 has had zero service packs and it runs great. I ahve seen signs of hte classic “Windows rot” in 7 though. I’ve been running my latest installation for about a year now and it’s getting flaky.
Bottom line:
If you are still hanging onto XP it’s time to move provided you have the correct hardware. IE9 among others are beginning to become Vista/7 products only. I call XP “functionally obsolete” as you are going to see more and more developers move away from XP even though technically Microsoft still “supports” XP(It is a 9 year old operating system). Even “older” hardware(aka see my notebook) can handle Windows 7 for light work.