Windows 7

I hate to admit this. I really do. I'm running Windows 7, and liking it. On two boxes, even.
My impressions so far are that it's:
1) Fast. Fast for Windows, at least. My 7 boxes boot up much faster than Vista ever did, and even faster than XP. I've made no changes so far as to reducing the "eye candy" settings, and everything I run on it loads quickly.
2) Friendlier. Much friendlier than Vista. No longer am I inundated with security pop-ups for every task I try to do. File sharing and copying and moving files and directories aren't the nightmare they were under Vista.
3) Backwards Compatible. Every program I ran under Vista and XP has worked so far under 7. Out of the box, with no downloads or wizards suggesting a work around (with the exception of my printer, and the Vista driver works just fine).
4) Easy to install. Easiest ever. and a nice little bonus.. Windows 7 install (at least if you had a previous Vista installation) saves a copy of user data from your profile and other programs under a directory called Windows.old. And any directories created under system root are saved and written back out. Some folks will gripe about this. But consider the number of users who might have saved all their pictures in a directory called Pics off the root. And forgot to back them up in their haste to try out 7. This feature just saved all those photos of the trip to the Ozarks last summer. I like it. I can always go back and whack them later (I do Carbonite PLUS regular backups to a USB hard drive, but I like the protection anyway).
So, I might change my mind in a month, but so far it looks like a win for Microsoft to me. I've been frustrated with the bloatware from Redmond just like everyone else, from Windows 3.1 WFW to Vista, and let anyone in earshot know it. And as a network security guy, I'll still use Linux each day as much or more than Windows. But fair is fair. If you're going to bash 'em when they screw up, let's also commend them when they get it right.
I just hope I'm not retracting this whole post in a month or two. Finger crossed.