hehe, I have been setting up a few new laptops this week for Xmas pressies etc, and I was a little shocked by the size of updates needed for W7 machines already.
An Acer I have on the bench needed 38 updates, total size of 994Mb.... I cannot remember even Vista needing anything quite that big
Definitely W7 is quicker, and sleeker, but I'm not sure it is any faster than XP really. These new laptops are all realistically spec'd to suit Vista (as most manufacturers under-estimated how slow it was when it came out, and upped their basic spec accordingly. Now, since we have a 'normal' OS, the high spec makes it appear all the more fast.
W7 is a definite improvement on Vista as far as speed is concerned, and I haven't really had many in for repairs just yet (Vista had lots of problems initially, and still does regularly), but its early days yet.
Why exactly are there spurios OSX/Mac comments all over this thread btw, considering the OP asked about Windows?
Oh, and please don't be thinking that, since W7 is out, you need to be upgrading all your existing XP machines..... no reason at all to be doing that, why fix something which isn't actually broken?
There are some decent bargains to be had with laptops, as Dawg said earlier in the thread, so have a good look around the moment we get Xmas out of the way, and you'll pick up a decent lappie at a decent price.