[Cyker]

Superior is very relative here

What they 'said' they did was re-write windows from the ground up so that all the baggage of older Windows' wouldn't be needed anymore. Phrases like 'streamlined code' were bandied about.

I suspect it's partly true only because of the number of programs it broke (I work for primary schools, and they never have any money for new stuff so a lot of the programs they use are ancient).

However, the code is definitely no faster; The fact that you need a system twice as powerful to get equivalent performance bears this out, but this just seems to be a general trend. I can only assume programmers are getting worse or not given enough time.

It's pretty crazy how fast Win98 and 2K boot on my system compared to Win7 on my mate's laptop, and the laptop has twice the RAM, 8 times more HD space and 3 more cores!

To be fair tho', Linux is getting this problem too; When I first installed Gentoo the boot sequence as MUCH shorter than it is now. However, being able to recompile the system has allowed me to carry this install across about 4 or 5 machines so far with no loss of functionality, whereas with Windows you're basically stuck re-installing it every time you get a new machine, porting all your data/apps over etc.).
I just make sure the kernel is set for the new machine, pull the drive (Or clone it when I went from ATA to SATA), and off I go!

I think Linux is ready for the general user, as in those who treat computers like appliances (Basically use it as installed, never try to add much new software), but a looong way off if you don't want to be spoon-fed and led around by the repository of your distro.

I mean, I use Gentoo because I hate a lot of the design decisions in modern distros (I dislike Gnome and absolutely HATE KDE4), but the power of choice is a two-edged sword and it requires a lot more work to keep it running.
Ubuntu is at the opposite end, more the Apple philosophy where everything is done for you, and if you want something different you can't have it (Well you can, as it's Linux, it's just that you're on your own in the deep-end of the shark-infested pool, esp. since if you start tinkering more and more, the things that make Ubuntu easy will stop working for you!).

All that said, the one thing that Linux has that nobody else has done better is 3D desktop effects

[S-99]

I thought besides the features, 7 had big parts of it rewritten, supposed to make it superior to XP in any case?

Not really. Windows 7 is actually just a slightly less resource hungry stabilized vista with the customers dealing with removed features (assigned from removed features, this is an intelligent move for a vista base since i thought it was actually a good os, aside from drm ****). Such as the classic start menu, and some other things that people liked a lot that made it easier to use new versions of windows.

[Nuke]

my biggest gripe about vista is they had to rename everything to make it look as if it was loaded with new stuff, when in fact it was the old familiar stuff with a different icon and a different name. my biggest gripe about windows 7 is actually something which should be trivial, no classic start menu.

[Mars]

I like windows 7, but I wish the control panel still had a classic view.

[Astronomiya]

I like windows 7, but I wish the control panel still had a classic view.

... It does.  Go to the Control Panel, look in the upper right of the window, you should see something saying "View by:  " with a drop-down box next to it.  On my machine (Win7 Pro-64), there are three options:  Category, small icons, and large icons.  The icons settings are equivalent to the Windows 9x Control Panel.