[CaptainHaplo]

XP support for all non-security issues ended in 2009 unless you have a contract with them. Security patches will still occur till 2014. You are hardware limited long term, as newer hardware will gradually not write drivers for XP, though that will take a few years yet.

To answer you - windows 7 is what Vista SHOULD have been. Its stable, user friendly and simply works. Its fast, drivers are readily available, etc. Honestly, the GUI changes are what most users are going to notice. There are some major "under the hood" changes, particularly to the networking side of the house, but those are positives. Some of the little tweaks added to the GUI are things users love - like rotating your desktop background with various pictures if you want. The speed is great (It boots MUCH faster than XP) - memory management is solid. Overall, M$ really did a great job with this one for once.

The ONLY drawback I can list is that some very old games may give you problems. Games like Imperium Galactica II simply need to be patched (or run in a slightly lower res) to make work, while a rare few will refuse to install. The only 2 I have had that issue with are the first two Brothers in Arms games - and those are known issues with the installer that the maker refused to fix. Truly old games like Shogun Total War struggle if you use a widescreen monitor - but that isn't OS related. Super old games - DOS based stuff - if your into that - still works great because DosBox runs fine on Windows 7. Out of the many games I have had - only the two BIA games have I been totally unable to make work. That says something.

For users who have actually USED windows 7 - you will rarely find complaints. I hated vista - even once it matured into something resembling a working OS - but 7 is the way to go!