Works for me
I've been running Windows 7 on my Dell Latitude D610 for a few weeks now (courtesy of the MS Action Pack), and I have to say I'm generally impressed.
Having skipped Vista altogether there's much more that is "new" to me than a previous Vista user, but I particularly like:
1) The simplified installation process that asks all the questions up-front rather than halfway through. I particularly like the fact that I don't have to jump through hoops to remove English (United States) - by selecting United Kingdom that is the only language that ends up on the desktop.
2) Hardware/driver support - this is a real leap from XP - *all* of my hardware was recognised on install, including bluetooth, wireless, graphics adapter etc. The only thing that "needed" a driver was the touchpad to enable the swipe-to-scroll functionality.
3) Boot time is faster than XP, and resume from suspend is lightning-fast.
4) The interface is very "OS X", and I mean that in a good way - it's a good looking interface.
5) General speed/usability is good - it doesn't seem to slow down when I'm performing large file operations (which I understand Vista is berated for).
6) I *like* the new taskbar - the ability to rearrange programs and the "quick peek" functionality works nicely.
I have to say I wouldn't hesitate to equip a new PC with Windows 7. I certainly wouldn't upgrade the hardware on an older PC in order to run 7 as the benefits, whilst nice, aren't worth the cost of hardware plus the cost of a 7 license.
In a corporate environment I would be very surprised if any FTSE-100 company started rolling out Windows 7 any time soon - Microsoft are in an awkward position whereby corporates running XP need a damn good reason to upgrade to a new OS, and some eye candy and out-of-the-box driver support are nowhere near a big enough incentive for them to make a change. The fact is that XP (on the whole) *works*, and given that support/patches are going to be around for a while yet I don't see corporate adoption of Windows 7 picking up until 2012 at the earliest.