Hey Starkers: by the way I recently upgraded my machine.

Sounds overcomplicated to me, but whatever floats your boat.

Good on you, kona, I'm pleased for you.

It's not that complicated, and it makes sense to me.    Win 7 has all the important stuff and is my primary OS, while Vista is my gaming OS and just has a few essential proggies for if and when they're needed.

You could just run Vista on top of 7 with Virtualbox.

My big complaint is win7 seems to crash at random a lot while streaming.  I've used many different programs to no avail.  Maybe it's something else?  I dunno, pretty much given up at this point.

7 never crashes on my while streaming movies or videos.

As most were anticipating what Windows 7 was going to be like I too was curious. I've been using it since RC1 and really don't see much to rave about. My Vista Ultimate system is VERY fast, reliable and a joy to use. I haven't found anything in Windows 7 that I would abandon Vista for. There is one thing, however, which Windows 7 did for me which Vista did not do... give me a ton of laughs. This was done indirectly, I admit, because the laughs came and continue to come from those who ignorantly bashed Vista and refused to upgrade from XP. Windows 7 isn't that much different than Vista but the diehard Vista bashers are now lauding Windows 7 as if it was something totally different and light years better. Sorry guys/girls, but although Windows 7 does have some nice improvements and a few features it is basically a redo of Vista. It's good and worth upgrading to from XP. But if your Vista system is like mine and many others who didn't follow the lemming Vista-bashers, which means you don't have to try and save face, save your money and wait for the next OS from Microsoft.

Again, just so I'm not misconstrued, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Windows 7. It's a very good OS. But it isn't significantly better than Vista which for many of us has been a very reliable system.

I could, but Vista was already installed and running fine, so I just left it there.  It was my primary OS, so all I had to do was uninstall my programs and I have a lean, mean gaming machine... which, with virtually no start-up proggies (just WB IP and CFX) and all non-essential services/processes disabled, is pretty darned quick.  So yeah, I have the best of both worlds.

Right on, Hapkido!  Vista isn't the pig most people made it out to be, not by a long shot.  The thing is, many Vista bashers  hadn't even/ever tried it (a tinker on a store demo machine doesn't count) and based their opinions on a magazine/newspaper article or somebody else's.  Yup, the human race is made up of a lot of sheeple, and following the misinformed herd is so much easier than independent thinking.

However, while I still like my Vista x64 installation, I do like Win 7 a lot.  While quite similar to Vista, it seems to start faster and my proggies seem to run a little more efficiently, and thus, I prefer it over Vista in some/many instances.

Actually much of the code is different.

I've used Windows since the 3.1 days.  I used XP for many years, on 3 different machine, 2 of which I built myself.  XP was by far the best Windows version at that time. 

In 2007 I decided that some brands of laptops had gotten powerful enough to support my gaming habits, and sprang for one - Vista was the only option available, so I went for Vista Home Premium.  It was a considerable pain getting my home network set up, turning off UAC, and setting up file and printer sharing on my home LAN.  There were a number of other niggling user interface issues, and even though I got it working reliably for 3 years, I never really thought it was as user friendly as XP. 

A couple of months ago the hard drive on that laptop bit the dust.  I ordered another laptop from the same firm, and this time Windows 7 was the only option offered.  I opted for Home Premium again, and so far it's been a breeze to set up and use.  The complaints I had about Vista have all been resolved in Windows 7, and I'm a happy camper once again.

For its time XP was the best, but Windows 7 is definitely better than Vista, IMHO.

Not sure which desktop gadgets you were using, but have you checked out the sidebar gadgets at wincustomize.com?  I used a couple of DesktopX widgets under Vista to monitor CPU, memory, and network usage, but after moving to Windows 7 and finding out that Sidebar gadgets in 7 can be free floating (not tied to a sidebar) I found some gadgets that did the same function much better.