I was bored after work last night so I went to anandtech and read their write up on the release.
Looks like they took the Vista pig, gave it a fresh coat of paint and a little more lipstick, spend a few hundred million, and they have themselves a thoroughbred.
Other than watering down UAC, adding a bunch of codecs to Media Center and a UI facelift its the same OS. OK, they made it a little leaner for low end machines as well.
Guess I'll stick with Vista. Maybe an upgrade to 64 bit and more ram is in order.