Important fact
I never worked with Windows Vista, never would .. So I had no experience neighter with 64bit OS neighter with Vista logic.
Windows 7 installation
I wasn't expecting any problems here, however the shock came in the beginning. Ever since Windows 95 we were able to format the system partition and how big was my surprise and serious disappointment when I found out that I just can't do this here. Every partition had the option to be formatted, the system (C) partition, however, didn't. Every time I install or reinstall my system, this is my key requirement, since I always want to start clean. I'm not going to guess the reasons for this situation, I insist - users should have the option to format their system partitions.
Ok, moving on, the installation was fluent and pretty fast, no arguments whatsoever, one note tho. I would expect to see some detailed info about the progress. When the installation went into - completing - phase, there were no infos about the process. I dunno, just some basic info - copying files, building registry ... to inform us about what's happenin. I just didn't feel comfortable about watching just dots during the process. This was the longest phase of installation, after that system rebooted and my new Windows 7 was all set up and I could get to work.
First steps
After first logon I found all devices installed properly, including audio and video drivers. That was cool, satisfaction. But there was a problem. I have 5.1 surround system and a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE (SBA). Getting it to work properly took me about 10 hours of my time. It was terrible annoyance full of anger and emotions :) I consider this more of a Creative issue, since their support page didn't help me much (said very fairly). About this struggle and how I solved it in the next article on my blog.
The last major annoyance with the basic system functionality was when I tried to copy files to my system partition. Some of them (.exe, .js) said access denied. I suspected it's just set up somewhere to act like this, but I had no idea where to find this setting. After a while I got it to work. For those seeking this answer - it's in control panel - user accounts - change user account control settings - set it to never notify. That's it.
I have no hard feelings about these problems, I expected some bones in this fish :) Overall - system works good, programs are installed without problems (once I had to set the compatibility mode :O) including 32bit software.
System performance
I've read some articles about Win 7 being faster than Win XP. I would say, that they are +- equally fast, I'm satisfied with the performance. I have to say that the system boot is much faster than on Win XP. Also system startup. There are however some problems with internet browsers, but I guess these issues will be fixed in newer versions of browsers (especially Firefox). A real pain in the ass is terrible localhost performance which I'm trying to fix, but without success so far :(
And here it comes!
What definately killed me was Windows Media Player 12 (WMP). I'm feeling this way as a lengthy WMP user (earlier versions). I used WMP 10 and WMP 11 for 6 years and I was really satisfied. I really don't have much requirements on my media player but I can tell what's enough for me. And WMP 12 crossed the line on many points. I like what it looks like, I really do, but if that comes with the price of that "performance" then I say I'm not paying it! Ok, step by step: window resizing, window drag & drop - terrible slow (I have a pretty good PC, including video). I solved this problem however with adjusting the affinity of wmplayer process to be processed only with one core. But what's really annoying is the speed of the library sorting, jumping to, even the scrolling. When I scroll my lists I feel like each one item is a monster object with a hundred tons of overhead. The scrolling on the list is absolutely unacceptable, it's year 2010 and I refuse to wait 15 seconds to scroll from one end to another. On WMP 10 how fast I scrolled was how fast I got results. Another thing - the jumping through the list (typing on focused list) works like crap. In earlier WMPs what you typed was what you got. Here, every single char you type is taken individually, so you can't specify your query, you can jump to the first item with the typed char - that's it. Unacceptable. And it all goes with 10 - 15 seconds delay of course, so you get the picture.
Well, I've pulled down a lot of anger from me with this whole WMP thing and I feel much better now :D But what I'm definitely going for downgrade WMP to version 11!
So, some final words, resume. I'm really satisfied with Windows 7 and I can say that it's a decent follower of a Windows XP (no, I don't see Vista :)). What I don't know, what I don't understand will come in time, and I have to acclimate to it completely, but I'm looking forward to it. But that WMP 12 ... that was painful :X