I ran XP, Then Vista, and now 7. And I have to say that Windows 7 is definitely by far the most amazing OS made by Windows. It's close to XP. Vista though, I look at as down near windows 95/98.

I used Vista for a while and it was constant hounding of messages, nothing working, asking me permission to open EVERYTHING, and I generally believe after my big hellish Vista experience, that vista was built around security. It seemed like it was 80% security, and only 20% doing what I wanted it to do.
(Plus I accidentally deleted the recycling bin on a few occasions. Guess why). It got to the point where I just installed BlackBox on it.

But with 7 I can be A LOT more organized, everything runs faster, I'm not nearly being hounded as much, and I can pretty much customize the entire system 100% to fit my own wants and needs. 7 DOES have it's flaws though, such as a few touches of Mac (which I dispise), but thankfully it's not the uber shitty touches of mac. :p Makes it a little less original, but that doesn't even put a dent in how incredible 7 is.