Ars Technica’s Peter Bright, in his 15 page review of Windows 7:
So while Windows 7 may not right all of Vista’s wrongs, it is absolutely superior to its predecessor. It has three years of improvements, so it can’t help but be better. But if you hated Vista’s UI, you’re going to hate Windows 7’s. Worse, in fact, because 7 forces you to use the new Start menu and taskbar, with no possibility of reverting to the old behaviour. If your applications didn’t work in Vista, they almost certainly won’t work in 7. Sure, 7 has some virtualization tools to help, but this was always possible in Vista too. If you felt Vista was too big and too slow, well, 7 isn’t going to provide much joy there, either. Marginal improvements, perhaps, but nothing more. Everything “bad” about Vista—and I use the word in the loosest possible sense, because the things that garnered most complaints have negligible legitimacy—is still “bad” in 7.
Does this make Windows 7 a bad operating system? Not in the least bit. Windows Vista, for all its (alleged) flaws, was the best version of Windows ever shipped. The underlying changes it made were essential to the longevity of the Windows platform, and user features like the searchable Start menu remain an absolute joy that make XP look clunky and ancient in comparison. Windows 7 is even better than Vista, so XP holdouts should upgrade with confidence. Windows 7 is a great OS.
In my own testing, I’ve found 7 to run faster than XP and Vista on the same hardware, respectively. But it’s clear that Windows 7 as is to Vista as Snow Leopard is to Leopard. Which isn’t a bad thing at all.