SweetPea, you can rearrange the order of the applications opened just by dragging them around on the taskbar. This is something you can't do without third party applications on any other version of Windows. You can also pin ones there to function much like the quicklaunch bar that has been around forever. There are reasons to get rid of the old interfaces. As much as people are used to them, they are not effcient. The UI can be heavily modified as well. However, based just off of the defaults, some people simply won't like it because they like the old ui that they have been used to for years. It took me about an afternoon of heavy use to get used to the new UI, and now I prefer it. The stacking method actually works really well in the new UI, but only if you have Aero enabled. Then you have the Aero Peek to see all the different windows inside of the stack and you click on the Title or window of what you want. I actually found it to be more useful.
I personally have Windows 7 RC currently running on two machines. One is a Core2-Quad with 4GB DDR2 and a nice video card, etc... it runs beautifully. The other is a 7 year old laptop and it works quite well there also. The only driver I have had to go looking for was for the USB wireless adapter for my laptop. I just put in the Vista ones (since Windows 7 specific ones weren't available yet) and off I went. For those people who haven't yet taken the plunge, give it a try. The Windows 7 RC is free and available to download through August 20th and will work through June next year. You can get it over at Microsoft's Technet here:
http://tinyurl.com/9agzvs