[thzero]

As a tip, you can click on the directories in the folder bar too and get there. Clicking on the arrow even gives you a list of subdirectories. The 'up' would be nice, but really I dont even notice the lack.

I've used almost every windows OS from Win 3.1 all the way through 7. I've got Vista at work, used to hava Vista at home (prior to that XP and prior to that 2000) but upgrade to Win7 on a gaming rig, XP on a tablet. Not to mention that the 2008 servers.

I'd definetly classify myself as a power user. I change the layout of the All Programs, change the location of the 'My' folders (which is damn easy in 7 without the need of tools) and on and on [I usually run a C: OS drive at least a D: data drive; normally push all my User folder to that D: drive.] I will say that I actually dislike working on XP thats on my tablet (this will go to Win7 too).

The example you gave of the dialogs, I still feel they are lacking. I want more information, i.e. don't tell me a time, tell me exactly how many bytes out of how many bytes, etc.

With Vista/7 both the driver model (this includes moving the video driver out of the kernel which is great) and the virtual memory model have changed. With 7, I haven't seen the memory usage reported as inflated as with Vista. But I also haven't bothered to look deeply. While there are more resources for the new Aero interface, we do have more resources than we did in XP days so why not use them, since the new driver model actual offloads much of the GDI calls to the graphics card instead of processing them itself. This is far better than 2000/XP, no need for the CPU to do things that the GPU is much more capable of doing.

Bottom line for me is that I found some initial issues with the switch, but really I've gotten used to 7 and actually enjoy it more than I did XP. And I know *exactly* where everything is. :) But I do use the search feature too.

Oh and 7 is hardly a bubble gum interface; if you want that go visit default Mac-land (but only if Steve Jobs lets you).