XP or 7?

[CoffeeFiend]

It always takes some time to get used to a new OS and improved ways to work. I for one wouldn't go back to XP even if they were giving it away.

-Finally a 64 bit platform that just works (unless you have some old and poorly supported devices with no 64 bit drivers) which is about time

-It can make use of machines with "modern" specs (4GB+ of RAM, SSDs, etc)

-the start menu search. I don't think I could ever go back, manually looking for something in the menus (such a pain)

-common apps docked on the taskbar (beats cluttering the desktop with a million icons, which are always hiding behind all the opened apps anyway), with jumplists where you not only have recent documents (big time saver) but where you can also pin common stuff (another huge time saver and again, less desktop icons). I increase the jumplist to 20 entries myself. XP's taskbar is a disaster compared to Win7 (even Vista's was a nice improvement over that).

-less annoying tray icons ('nuff said)

-aero snap (not eye candy at all, very useful, especially if you know the keyboard shortcuts)

-far more stable (including cool things like restarting video drivers instead of BSOD'ing), and seemingly never needs reinstalling

-loads of new cool techs apps can use (like directx 11, direct2d, etc) and other cool stuff like powershell built-in

-far more secure overall (service hardening, UAC, all the 64-bit related enhancements over XP, IE protected mode, etc)

-finally having MUI available through windows update

-better explorer. You've seen, breadcrumbs but there's the new copying dialog, the waiting 'till the end of the copy for errors (instead of nagging 50 times while it comes, right in the middle of it), etc

-an audio mixer that makes lifes much easier (apps not hijacking the master volume anymore)

...

I think it's fantastic.