I went ahead and installed it. Windows 7 is compelling, but still, it has been overhyped.

Good:

1. I get the impression that most reviews became enamored with the new task bar, which, while compelling and does save a lot of time, is not entirely critical to me.
2. If the tablet functions of Vista were its only must-have features, then the alternate input improvements are the key selling points of Windows 7 for me. Here we have much improved Chinese handwriting recognition and speech recognition (in particular, dictation) in multiple languages. These have passed the critical threshold of being useable and indeed I can say they are better than keyboard input. That is no small feat.
3. Math input panel, as mentioned previously, is not quite up to par yet, but I can see a lot of potential. While it is faster than typing straight LaTeX, it is not faster than LyX. But for labeling figures, this is perhaps useful.
4. PowerShell, i.e. Monad, is beautiful.
5. The volume controller has been restored to usefulness, with audio loopback for devices now possible.
6. Libraries could be a very useful feature, but seems to be lacking something that helps ease their management.
7. Per-file versioning (from system restore) should be very helpful.

Bad:

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