Hi, I am glad to read so many like minded people here. The function of an OS is to make is efficient to run different applications to get a job done, not to add nifty feature to preview pictures or fancy 'Aero' interface. I bought a new HP laptop and I cannot even install XP on it due to ACPI conflicts in the bios. Its sad. When I went to an 'expert' discussion boards to find a solution, I was simply told to live with Win7 and 'get over' an ancient OS. These kids have no idea these days. sigh amazingIndustry, if you want to revert the system to an earier more 'lightweight' state than look into ghosting the OS partition on hard drive. I go tired of reinstalling Windows every year and was even reluctant to install new software on the PC due to the fear it would slowdown the OS. Then I discovered programs like Horton Ghost and Acornis True Image. I usually make an image of the hard drive partition soon after installing new OS and necessary apps and then revert to this image later. It also works as disaster recovery tool as Norton Ghost can be run from DOS and you can make bootable CD/USB drive to run these tools.