hows it perform as a development platform?
I am currently using a Vista box and as I'm sure you are aware all Vista users are going to be offered a free upgrade to Win 7.
As it stands, I find Win 2000 best for development, none the prettyness gets in the way of system performance when compiling or developing GUIs
Like I said, it runs on a very slow processor and you can always turn off areo and areo only requires a 64 mb graphics card, so assuming you have a computer that was made in the last 3 or 4 years you should be good, however I am not a developer so I don't really know what you require from an os, that being said if your using vista now windows 7 will be a definite improvement, plus windows 2000 is not going to be supported by developers for much longer, even firefox is talking about dropping windows 2000 support.
I really like Win 7, I have been running it for Media Center for 6 months. I am going to the "PARTY" Next week. Fast and Flexible, light yours above Vista!!!
i like windows 7, the time of turning on is slower as opposed to win xp
but i still think it's pretty great
Admin Edit: Link Removed
Anybody here test the RC of Windows 7, I have and I must say that its the first windows I am willing to pay for (as opposed to using Linux, not pirating software, I don't do that). It is very stable, the search features rock and overall it is a pleasure to use, I actually prefer it over ubuntu, also it uses less resources than ubuntu 9.04. I actually have it running on my old dell latitude d600 and other than not having areo it works extreamly well for basics like surfing the web, photo editing (as long as you use gimp) and open office, inkscape is a little slow when using some of the tools but is still usable.