Quite sometime since I chipped in a post here. So almost out of words really to add on something.
Recently Windows 7 beta version was released by Microsoft. It was a straight 2.5Gb download from the site.. Damn.. Using a Mac from so long hasn't left any ounce of love really for windows honestly, but ya, i don't hate Windows. So, out of curiosity i downloaded Windows 7, just to give it a shot and see if it was a step back or a step ahead from Vista. N my word for that, the whole installation processes and most of the things went on nice and smooth. I havn't actually been that brave to install Vista myself, so I cannot compare the installation of Windows 7 from Vista, but Windows 7 was slick from the word Go.. It even detects your GMA 3100 which was out of scope for Xp.
The look and feel of Windows 7 is pretty much the same as that of Vista but the whole experience was wayy better ( thankfully ). As i said, i havn't actually used Vista so it took me sometime to figure out little its-bits in settings. But overall am actually quite impressed with it. But hey, before i forget, Windows might have copied Mac's icon tray style design but only difference is in Windows 7, the icons keep on adding up in the dock. It'll take sometime to recognize the icons bcuz i cudn't figure out some of them myself.
And just a tip. If you installing Windows 7 after Xp and by chance you formatted C drive, then you'll be st. away logged into Windows 7 bcuz oops.. you just lost the Xp bootloader..
But nothing to worry, Just get a free copy of EasyBcd and you might need 2 files NTDETECT.COM and ntldr which are freely available on net to get an option for booting Xp as well during start up...