bill - 4:13 am on Oct 15, 2009 (gmt 0)

I've been running Windows 7 since the beginning of this year. I started with the beta, then tried the release candidate, and I've been running the final version for a couple of months now on several different machines. I use it on everything from a netbook, to laptops, and several desktops.

If you've got a home network Windows 7 is great to link everything together. Things just simply work. Add everything to your HomeGroup and share what you like. It's a far cry from those days of trying to get Windows XP & 2000 machines to recognize one another. It's super smooth and has easy to use with wizards to walk you through it.

As XP was more secure than 2000, and Vista was more secure than XP, Windows 7 has gone a long way to make security work right out of the box. It's a lot less intrusive than Vista (UAC), which should appease some. I think they've struck a nice balance here. It's secure, but no longer nagging in the way that Vista was.

The UI is very clean and easy to work with. I was initially not a fan of Vista's UI, but as I came to understand the reason for some of the design elements it became clear that they made some very smart choices at Microsoft. Windows 7 takes the Vista UI and improves on it.

I want to know if this thing is worth the trouble of backing up all my stuff and then reinstalling all of it.

First you'd want to run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor [microsoft.com]. That will tell you if your system is lacking anything.

Your question is a hard one to answer actually. If you have a well functioning system setup on another version of Windows then it may not be worth your time to go through everything to get a new OS. Maybe you should just wait until you get a new machine. However, if you have a minimal amount of software to add and setup then I'd say you might want to consider it. It has certainly breathed new life into several of my machines.