Reply #37: Windows 7 is going to Release Candidate very soon.

[merwin]

The damn thing runs well on a netbook even, and there's going to be a SKU specifically for netbooks.

As for IE, Media Player, and Windows Mail, you don't have to use them. You can disable access to them so you don't have to see them anywhere. They probably only take up a collective 200MB at most, which is nothing on today's hard drives.

If you could provide an actual example of the bloat in Windows 7, please let me know. I'm running it on 4 computers at my house right now, all of different specs (high end to low end) and they all run even faster than XP.

As for the XBOX 360, when compared to the PS3, it's sales are doing exceptional everywhere except for Japan, and that looks to be due to the Wii, which is in a different class (IMHO) than the PS3 or XBOX360.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_(seventh_generation)#Sales_standings