Looks like MS is ready to put the vista nightmare behind. Personally I have not much against it. I like visual details added to an OS. The only problem is that it is too high a hardware upgrade for most users. Anything less than 2GB of ram results in an unstable system. XP could comfortably run at 256 MB of Ram with minimum load.
While windows 7 I doubt will reduce any of the memory load, I expect it will reduce some of the problems. For one thing, the pesky User Account Control functionality can be disabled much more easily than the convoluted and potentially catastrophic registry modification things in Vista.
Google Earth has released its version 5 and it definitely has lots of improvements. So does Picasa3. But Gmail labs has really gone to the next level. Meanwhile many interesting web based applications are coming out. One shout out to Geni.com which helps to create and link family trees without a lot of hassle. Facebook, Orkut has always been using up my time for a few years now and probably will continue to do so. Till the next time Ciao!