I've been running the Windows 7 Beta and later the RC since it first became available.
I Just Installed the Full version yesterday on one of my machines, and took quiet a bit of pleasure in getting rid of the Dual boot with XP
as while I'd not really used it more then a couple of times since installing W7 I did have it there as a backup in case of any major bugs cropping up in the Beta.
As I mentioned in the
earlier thread, I've loved using W7, enjoying the new UI and added feature, using the Final release is bring few surprises, mainly a few final tweaks, etc which while not major smooth things out.
While this License I got through the MS Student Offer, I've got 4 other ones which I pre ordered when they first when they first went on sale, as I'm planning to upgrade all the machines that my immediate family uses to W7 as it will simplify usage and support issues for them and me tremendously.
One of them is My dad, and He's one of the people who is going to get the main benefit out of this. He uses a Sony T Series Ultra portable, which Came with Vista, which is unfortunate as It only had a Gig of Ram and has a 1.2 ULV Core Solo Processor.
As you can probably imagine, It ran Dog Slow. With the Maximum RAM capped at 1.5GB, there was little that could be done to get it to perform at a reasonable pace. The Windows 7 RC was a boon, as It allowed me to upgrade the OS on that Device to get better performance then I ever had on it without having to Pay to test it.
So He's right now happily using the RC, and I'll be upgrading it to the Full Version over the Holidays, as we'll both have enough time then to back everything up and do a nice proper Clean Install, which will probably give even better performance as I had to do an upgrade when going to the RC as there was not enough time.
So W7 definitely been good at getting decent performance from comparatively modest systems.
The only complaint I have is that the upgrade process is not as simple as it should be, and requires at least a little bit of technical skill and understanding. This is where MS could learn something from Apple, who usually makes Upgrades easy and simple to do, in turn getting a larger number of users to upgrade to the new OS, in turn making their own support processes simpler.