most things xp does everything faster than vista and windows 7. windows 7 does most things faster than vista. this link compares windows 7 to xp and vista. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/windows_7_review
My understanding is that it has to be a certain high spec USB drive, just any old thumb drive won't work - seem to remember the type costing $100+ for $GB
I just bought a new Dell system from their outlet yesterday. I was going to wait a few months after Win7 was out and get it preinstalled, but I came across a great deal and I really do need a new system now. The problem is that it comes with Vista, but I do get a free Win7 update. I should receive the update about 3 weeks after receiving the system. Would it be better to hold off using my system until I get the update, and install it from a clean Vista system, or does it not make any difference whatsoever.
The speed differences between XP, Vista, and Win7 are trivial in my way of thinking. To me "faster" is 2x, not 10%. Processor and Mobo choices would affect speed a lot more than OS choice... Win7's UI is on a par with a MAC. I'm going to wait until it seems to be stable and get all new machines with Win7. Currently I'm running XP on an older machine that wouldn't quite stream HULU videos with Vista and Vista on the trading machine... I don't have any big complaints about either OS really but the UI is really important to me and improved file management can't be a bad thing... Choosing different levels of UAC is a big thing really, for the surfing machine, which I'm going to rebuild from a hdd format up periodically anyhow, I can set it to a low level of security. For the trading machine which I need to guard with a level of paranoia that makes sweat bead on my forehead, it can be set to the other extreme... I'm feeling good about a Microsoft OS for the first time since XP came out...
For a "surfing machine" i just build a clean VM with all patches and image that in every few weeks. With a full XP built into W7, that's now very easy to do.
Been using it for seven days and so far its the best OS ever built. Beautiful, fast, no crashes, no complaints! Hope nothing changes.
From what I hear Win7 has more hours of Beta testing than anything ever.. unless you count Linux, but is Linux ever out of Beta?