Have just replaced the wife's PC (7yrs old) with a XPS8000 studio. Came with 64bit ver of Vista, she seems to like it, but I see what you mean about obtrusiveness - get asked to confirm everything you do. It came with the Win7 upgrade offer and I've already registered.

Its time to replace my 2 business laptops and I may wait for Win 7 SP1 unless I start having issues with either. Friend dnloaded the beta ver of Win7 and really likes it, but he jumped from XP and doesn't have any feeling for how diff/better it is relative to Vista.