-Very hard to find free software that isn't spyware infested -Bad GUIs in most apps -- lots of inconsistency on basic things like open/save dialogs -Most of the apps are very bulky. Even a simple app has a ton of toolbar icons, tons of menu entries, lots of wasted screen space, etc -Most Windows apps still include really low res ugly icons. Windows 7 looks nice but then you've got some 16x16 8 color icons or whatever in your Dock that look awful. -Lack of built in tools (good CLI, SSH, X11 clients) -Doesn't interoperate very well with my other non-Windows systems (no NFS, AFP) -Doesn't include a good backup system built in -No easy way to update applications (like apt or sparkle on OSX) -Still way too many popups, system tray icons, warnings, wizards, etc. -Not worth ~$100 to me. DRM makes it a bit too hard to pirate so I'll stick with XP in my VM -The system wide search feature doesn't work inside of many common file types making it far less useful to me. -Installing / Uninstalling apps is a bulky process with half a dozen clicks required in each direction.
My friend bought 7 Pro for his extremely fast PC built in the last couple of years. But within hours he decided to remove it (back to XP) and wait until he buys a new PC. I'm sure the hardware businesses love that, but what kind of value is that for a multi-hundred-dollar OS?
A lot of the improvements that they have made(which they deem usability improvements) have been things that annoyed ever since Windows 95 came out(such as window group in the taskbar).
I switched my systems to Linux variants a long time ago and it was painful to see the desktop systems there trying to mimic the same wrong behavior. I use Win7 at one of my jobs and think it is somewhat bearable for a developer.
Windows XP minimal install requires around 1.5 GB disk space..
Windows 7 minimal install requires around 16 GB disk space..
I don't think I'll be upgrading anytime soon..