I think that it already is. I have installed Windows 7 RC on my primary system in a dual boot with Vista and on my older, secondary system in a dual boot with XP. On my primary system, I am pretty much always booting to Windows 7 RC lately. On the secondary system, XP and Windows 7 RC get about equal time.

But "better" is a subjective measure so you need to define what it means to you.

I haven't seen any benchmarks of the speed of Windows 7. It is clearly faster at booting, shutting down, and entering and resuming from sleep modes. Every review I have seen agrees with these points. In terms of the speed of menus, windows, application launches and so on, I have not seen any hard data. To me, it seems no better or worse than Vista which I have always been very satisfied with. I also haven't seen any benchmarks on whether applications run faster, slower, or no different under Windows 7 than other Windows.

There are many new features in 7, though nothing that is a major departure from Vista. If you are familiar with Vista, 7 will feel very comfortable and has a shallow learning curve. XP users may find it jarring, but that would be true of moving from XP to Vista because so much was changed and added. Among the new features are Libraries, HomeGroup, Aero Peek & Snap & Shake, a redesigned taskbar, jump lists, and so on. See more at the Windows 7 home page.

The discounted pre-orders of Windows 7 are Upgrade versions, so they will replace your existing OS. Unless you are already running a dual boot with two valid Windows licenses, the Upgrade version will require a clean install to replace your existing Windows Vista install. Of course, you could purchase the full retail version, but it is not discounted. There is a confusing array of options -- see the Windows 7 pricing thread where we are discussing it all.

Also, have you tried running Windows 7 RC on your system? If not, you should run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to insure that there will be no problems running Windows 7 on your hardware and with your applications.

i'm running windows7 along with vista trimmed down with vlite. other than a few visual effects i'm favoring the vlite install although win7's version of wmc is a lot better. i've always used quad core processors and 4gb of ram so rescourses was never an issue. (feel free to spell check me, too)