Thanks to shoes, i stayed up late last night installing Windows 7.
On my netbook, the wireless lan drivers would not work, even if set to a vista or xp compatibility mode, which is a wounder!!
Therefore i'm now installing it back with Vista Ultimate.
HOWEVER, in the time spent mucking around with it (connected to web via ethernet cable instead), I can now give these personal views on Windows 7.
Firstly, as Shoes pointed out, the ratings can vary dramatically. My ratings were all way down on those quoted by Vista. Exception being Graphics (for Gaming) which was much higher. WEIRD!! I wouldn't personally look too deeply into rating scores, and agree with Shoes that overall performance seemed to be equal to if not slightly better than in Vista.
User Interface is certainly the big plus point. I wont go over your comments shoes, but agree entirely with all your views.
My big grunt about this is as follows... I PERSONALLY find that this is just Vista with a few (and only a few) tweeks made to it. No doubt the ultimate edition will be shipping out at a few hundred quid upon release and I would realistically say that it's not worth that money to someone who already uses Vista.
SUMMARY - nice UI, but I think this should have been released as a service pack update to Vista, and not "badged" as an entirely new operating system. I'll now probably do as I did with Vista, and wait for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to be released before I ever consider switching. By that time they've usually sorted out most of the driver issues and updates to the point where MAYBE it's worth shelling out for.
Thanks again shoes for the copy of the disc. If anyone else wants to try it out, your welcome to have my copy which shoes kindly ran off for me.
Wayne