Ugh, SQL Server 2000! I'm so glad not to ever have to work with that beast again. 2005/2008 streamlined so many things that its just a bear to go backwards.
Well as I mentioned, part of the 'face lifts' to the GUI were:
a) New driver model that supported the removal of UI rendering from kernel. This is great because it means if the UI crashed, it doesn't blue screen (thats not to say 7 won't BSOD... I've done it.
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b) Aero offloads the processing of the win32 graphics API calls (GDI/GDI+) basically to the graphics card. This is great because it allows the graphics card to do what its does and relives the CPU to do other things. This was an area with one of the big issues in Vista.
c) DirectX 10 (which does more than just 3D!). To some degree these changes had to do with the new driver model too which is one of the reasons it is not being backported to XP.
In all my time, I really haven't felt the Win7 (or even Vista) was really designed for the typical computer ignoramous (can't be said of the upcoming Windows Mobile or at least whats been bandied about in the tech web-rag world). Once I got accustomed to it, I really don't have many complaints.
And yeah, Nortin is a POS for sure. So is McAfee.
Remember people didn't really dig XP all that much to start with. My money is on that within 2 years people will have forgotten about XP and Win7 will definetly be the new standard. Of course there will be people who will disagree just as I'm sure you can find a few still running Win9X or heck even Win2000!