I really enjoyed the article on C-Net written by Ina Fried

This part sounds like the government of Belize:

"When it came time to planning the next version, newly installed Windows development chief Steven Sinofsky took the company's earliest ideas and met with PC makers.

That marked a huge change from past releases, where, as some PC makers described it, Microsoft would just develop windows in secret and then "throw it over the wall."

"Until Vista, Microsoft was fully thinking on their own and implementing their own ideas and then releasing it," said Gianpiero Morbello, a vice president for Taiwanese PC maker Acer.

This time around, though, Microsoft shared its earliest plans, sought input, and held regular meetings with the PC makers. In addition, it dedicated engineering teams to work with each of the biggest computer makers to help them work through any issues specific to their designs.

The computer makers and Microsoft began looking at each piece of software, whether it came from the PC manufacturers or a third party, and measuring its impact on the system. Those that were bogging things down were told to fix their software or else got pulled from new PCs.

The result is that Windows 7, in many cases, can boot up more quickly and go in and out of sleep in a matter of seconds. Consumers will also notice they get systems that are a lot less cluttered, in some cases with nothing more than a recycle bin on their desktop when they first boot their PC.

And I like this part too:

"Microsoft also had harsh messages for the PC companies. The vast amounts of preinstalled software that they were shipping on consumer machines, so-called "crapware" were slowing down systems and hurting the PC's image."

Yeah, get rid of the crapware.

I'm a bit confused. I bought a new 'puter this summer. At the time of purchase, the salesman told me that my computer qualified for an automatic free upgrade to Windows 7 at the time of release.

I still haven't figured out how that is supposed to happen. Certainly I haven't received any upgrade notices, etc.

Yes, yes, yes, before you guys jump all over me, I do intend to contact the company that sold me the 'puter and see what they have to say for themselves. But in the interim, one of my client's IT guru/tech support says "Yes, we've been hearing of this sort of thing for a while now and even we don't know how it is supposed to be implemented."

simply go to the download site at microsoft. I imagine you will provide your genuine vista id number and get a free upgrade via a validation process. I received a note about upgrades - but I haven't had a chance to look into it yet.

Hey, cool, thanks Amanda!

If you don't already have Win7 on your computer (you may have without knowing it), you can expect it to take several days to download at Belizean internet speeds. FAR better to get a Win7 disk. Better if you have to re-install it later as well.

If you're migrating from Vista you'll undoubtedly find Win7 a vast improvement. If however you're starting from XP then be prepared for a massive anticlimax - and an enormous learning curve. Microsoft have taken to changing every user interface they can, in most cases for no apparent benefit.

One thing I'm particularly wary of. I had no option with my latest computer but to run it with Vista, as it's been fixed by Toshiba so it won't run XP (yes, they admitted that to me). So I had to convert my Outlook Express email database to Windows Mail, as Outlook Express is one of the many programs that won't run under Vista. Functionally indistinguishable, but with enough changes behind the scenes to the database engine so that it's not backwards-compatible.

But in Win7 it appears (from what I read, as I haven't tried it) that Microsoft have changed it again, so that Windows Mail aka Outlook Express no longer exists. It seems that a further migration to Windows Live Mail is required. I tried this once and quickly dropped it when I realised that it gave control of my email database to Microsoft, and I had lost control. Emails would be downloaded, moved or deleted without my knowledge or permission. Of course I may be wrong, but it is compatible with Microsoft's declared long-term intention to move all processing off user computers and onto their servers. Time to move to a non-Microsoft email client!

I still intend to return to XP as soon as I can!

the little acer I bought was preloaded with xp. but it is small if you want to use it on a regular basis for everyday work.