Evil Timmy
Watcher
I'm pretty happy with Windows 7, and I've been running it on my laptop since the beta in January. I'm running Pro 64-bit ($30 if you're a student from win741.com) and I've had no problems with a variety of games, both brand new and old. The interface is a definite step up, and a lot of things have been subtly changed to work better and make more sense. Networking and media sharing are finally where they should have been years ago. While benchmarks seem to peg it as about the same speed as XP (depending on which test they're using), everything feels snappier and multiple apps don't slow down the system as much. It's great if you're a multi-monitor user, with shortcuts like WinKey+P to switch displays and WinKey+Arrows to arrange windows. Drivers now download automatically through Windows Update, and the whole install off a thumbdrive took less than half an hour.
All that said, though, I wouldn't buy it at full price. It has some definite improvements for laptops and netbooks, and it's all around nicer, but certainly not enough to make it worth US$200 or more. Unlike Vista, which was harmed by immature drivers at release, there's no reason to want to downgrade, so get it with your new computer with a DX11 card, but there's not much advantage to installing it on your year-plus-old PC.
All that said, though, I wouldn't buy it at full price. It has some definite improvements for laptops and netbooks, and it's all around nicer, but certainly not enough to make it worth US$200 or more. Unlike Vista, which was harmed by immature drivers at release, there's no reason to want to downgrade, so get it with your new computer with a DX11 card, but there's not much advantage to installing it on your year-plus-old PC.