7 promises to be that which Vista should have been, with a smaller footprint. I’m seeing reports that it runs fine on notebooks – those wee little 10″ / 3 pound laptop jobbies. I spoke to a techie this morning who said it ran fine on his relatively ancient 1.6Ghz Celeron processor. (4-5 years old or so?)

Pricing ranges from $29 for verified University / CC students to 299 for the full-blown Windows 7 Ultimate.

There is also an option to purchase a 3-pack upgrade, which allows you to upgrade 3 machines in your home from XP or Vista for $149.

Lastly, It’s available as a download – you don’t necessarily have to run out and buy it. Microsoft also provides a tool to burn the downloaded image onto a bootable DVD, or even make a bootable USB flash drive.