I don't hate it. not as much as XP or Vista. Strange as that may sound.

But I haven't had to use it full time. I bet I could grow to hate it as much as I hate XP given time.

Does it really work faster than XP and Vista like the reviews claim? And does it deliver shocking orgasms to your eyeballs?

Maybe I'll just hold off on the urge to use the RC and wait until the full version comes out so I can get the awesome free in-place upgrade. Wo0oot. Micro$oft looks like they be doin' something right for once.

Vanneto: You know not of what you speak: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Coffee.html

I tried the public beta in a virtual machine, and it seemed pretty good — I had to run without Aero, so I may be way off, but it looked like Microsoft had reined in the visual excesses and consolidated the bits of the OS people actually care about. Rolling QuickLaunch into the taskbar proper is something I'm a big fan of, but I now run OS X both at home and at work and we had RISC OS all the way through school so that could just be my familiarity with the Dock and, ummm, the RISC OS thing that's like the Dock.

I doubt I'll be an early adopter, but the chances of me picking up 7 to put in a VM so that I can catch up on all the latest .NET/XNA stuff is much greater than the chances of me picking up Vista.

Per Ars Technica, Windows 7 pricing announced: cheaper than Vista. So a full copy of 7 Ultimate should cost less than a full copy of Vista Ultimate.

At last some good news for Europeans:

Windows 7 E is the kneejerk playing-to-the-crowd version with no Internet Explorer. So you should be able to import a copy without Internet Explorer for cheaper than a normal copy. It's win win!

There is an offer allowing you to preorder Windows 7 at reduced prices, which for Canada are "Windows 7 Home Premium ($64.99) and Windows 7 Professional ($124.99)". But Ultimate doesn't seem to be on offer, so it is currently more than double the cost of 'Professional'. The preorder prices are strictly time and quantity limited — see the Ars article for full details. The UK preorder starts on July 15 (substantially after Canada), assuming no surprise expenses crop up between now and then I'll probably place an order, depending on what goes on with E. It looks like my decrepit Windows 2000 licence entitles me to upgrade pricing, but I guess only for the Professional edition which costs twice as much as Premium Home...

It all feels very expensive, but I'm not aware of any other firm that makes most of their money from Operating Systems, so there's not really anything to compare the prices with.

Even now that Office is so much cheaper? In any case, it'd be unfair to compare them to that hardware manufacturer with the custom OS that charges for upgrades who shall not be mentioned by name on any thread about Microsoft if it is to remain at all on topic.

Only if the main thrust of this thread is about another company that charges for service packs but recently took six years to deliver one. My conclusion: big companies tend to be consumer unfriendly.

I'm curious as to how the Windows 7 upgrade version works, and how does it validates you can use the upgrade version? Anyone one here used the upgrade version of Vista?

Does Windows 7 have a proper console? That's what makes me cry every time I try to use svn from cmd.exe...

While you're almost laughing, I am totally laughing at all of the fools that are stuck with Linux or OS X.

I'm not stuck with linux, I chose it. And I keep choosing it. I give windows a chance every now and then to see if its improved any. And so far I see no redeeming factors in windows at all.

OSX looked interesting, but I loathe the Dock, The lack of real virtual desktops, and the uselessness of its multi monitor support.