I installed windows 7 last week to see what all the hype was about, and yes, it was a legal beta copy from MSDN - technet.microsoft.com. I chose the upgrade option, rather than a complete install because most people would be taking this install path.

The install was relatively painless and looked very much like the Vista install. I took all the defaults and set my location parameters and then let the install do all the work.

Now the good stuff – windows 7 was starting up for the first time. Or was it vista? The new windows 7 looks just like my vista machine, so I had to verify that it actually installed. A little disappointed because it really was Windows 7, I kept looking around – but as I used windows 7, it felt like what vista should have been.
The user experience is a little cleaner and is not forcing Microsoft ideas on me at every turn (no I do not want to save my music in that folder!). At a glance, Windows 7 gives us

I am not sure that Windows 7 is a completely new operating system. I would speculate that the core details between vista and windows 7 are very, very similar.

Bottom line, for those who have switched to Vista and are not that happy, Windows 7 would be a good upgrade. For those who installed vista and then went back to XP, it could be a harder choice.