I keep an XP machine mainly for GeorgeS tools (I like those), haven't figured out a way to run them under Linux yet.
The Windows 7 your're talking about - I've seen some of it - it looks like they copied a lot of KDE3.5.
KDE 3.5 is pretty nice, I still like to use it for most development. All tough many Linux developers do not like KDE because it is a big memory hog (just like windows
).
KDE is already at 4x and by the time that windows 7 is out, they might be up to 5x.
My Old XP runs on a 64 bit CPU, I installed all the utilities suggested here, and it now runs the EQ client fine with Titanium.
I don't like SoF much because all my Titanium UIs will not work there, and I never liked the newer UI's.