Yes 7 is better than Vista. It is faster because of a smaller kernel and has special shortcuts on the taskbar for programs. I haven't used it myself, but I watched one of my friends using it and it was really quick to load windows and when the desktop loaded there wasn't a waiting period for programs to be able to be opened like Vista. Mind you they were using 64bit on an Alienware with 4gb of RAM, but I can see how it would benefit my system though that only has 2gb of RAM.