Windows 7 is fantastic, it's not related to Vista. It may look similar but there has been some major code rewrites and it behaves like a different beast. Having supported Vista at my old job under a pilot and attending some presentations on Vista and 7 and explaining the changes in 7 it is a huge breath of fresh air.
Even runs on a humble netbook at full throttle, 30 second boot time vs 4 and half minutes by Vista... and that was on a machine with 512MB of RAM. Vista choked trying to multitask, 7 no problems.
It's fast, stable and does what it is told.
From the Windows blog...
"The decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity. Over the years, we have taken different approaches to naming Windows. We've used version numbers like Windows 3.1, or dates like Windows 98, or "aspirational" monikers like Windows XP or Windows Vista. And since we do not ship new versions of Windows every year, using a date did not make sense. Likewise, coming up with an all-new "aspirational" name does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Windows Vista into the next generation of Windows.
Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore "Windows 7" just makes sense."
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/13/introducing-windows-7.aspxTBH it's a fantastic product and something I can finally replace XP with. I've also haven't used Ubuntu in awhile (apart from on my server, but then linux is great for that task.. apart from AD/PDC roles...)
MS Office on the other hand.... now thats bloatware