We now have 100% deployment of Windows 7 within the office. The last to move was Greig, for good reason in that his laptop was due for replacement this month (we have a two year replacement policy for engineers with their laptops). Greig is a hard man to impress. His comments have been surprisingly favourable. In terms of hardware, Greig received a custom built HP 8530p with a 120GB Solid State drive and Intel Core 2 Duo 9600 Processor.
In my use of Windows 7, I have really appreciated the speed of start-up, faster application start times, layout of menus, and ease of use of the control panel.
One really useful tool is the Snipping Tool which allows you to take limited screenshots. Such a simple tool that makes you wonder why it took so long to become part of the Windows operating system.
Regarding Solid State drives, initially we were really disappointed with how they performed under Windows XP. With Windows 7, we have only been impressed. We were so impressed, in fact, that they are now part of our standard build when replacing laptops. The slight price premium is well compensated by an improvement in system performance and increase in time available when operating on battery.