Some notes on my Windows 7 experiences so far:

- Clean installation was quick and smooth

- Internet Explorer still bundled; no sign of the 'browser selection
screen' that I understood to be required in Europe.

- First run of Windows Update found drivers for my Nvidia graphics
card and Razer Lachesis mouse, but failed to install three updates
(Dell monitor, update for gigabit ethernet adapter and security
updates for malicious software removal tool). These installed
correctly after a reboot, on the second attempt.

- The first time the computer tried to sleep / hibernate, it
bluescreened on wake. I've disabled sleep.

- Acronis TrueImage Home 2009 fails to mount backups as virtual
drives; you need Acronis TrueImage Home 2010 for that. Making a full
backup before upgrade / reinstall is critical.

- Having issues with Asus Xonar D2X and their Win7 beta drivers; I'm
getting sound through the generic drivers, but the 'proper' Xonar
interfaces don't function.

- Now getting 'unsigned' messages concerning syswow64 / hsmgr on
bootup. Possibly to do with
http://www.jeffreyjansen.nl/windows-7-cannot-run-32bit-applications-fix/
and http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1169304

So, all that aside, Win7 does seem to boot a bit quicker, but to be
honest, I'm not yet sure what Windows 7's 'killer feature' is, other
than "not being Vista".

Having created a Steam backup under Windows Vista (took the best part
of four hours, but I didn't really want to have to download >50GB of
data unnecessarily), I attempted to restore from the backup. First of
all, I saw a sliver of a window appear, with the title 'Restore Bac',
and the Steam process started running full speed on one CPU.

Eventually, a window appears asking me which games I'd like to restore
from backup, so I select them all and continue. Next thing I know,
Steam has merrily started downloading all the games over my broadband
connection again. Not so useful.

Just a quick test of Posterous. Wonder how they're going to handle security?