Some reviews of the leaked Windows 7 beta tackle the usability question of 7 compared to XP or Vista, which is really not that important to me right now. As a Windows XP user the burning question for me is if Windows 7 is faster than XP. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes over at ZDNet answers this question with 20 real world tests. As Windows 7 is still in beta benchmarks are not really fair, but to compare things like boot time, shut down time, file transfer, open Excel and Word documents are a good indicator of where Windows 7 stands compared to XP and Vista. In this series of tests Windows 7 wins by a big margin, which is very, very promising. In all honesty I am toying with the idea of switching to Apple OS X this year in case Windows 7 disappoints. I have been a Microsoft OS user since the MS-DOS days. I am sick of "waiting" for the OS or applications. It is the year 2009 and I want instant boot, stable instant suspend, and super fast application response. Watching my wife using her MacBook over the last two years giving me the impression Apple is closer to that ideal scenario than Microsoft. I am willing to pay serious money for the necessary hardware if Windows 7 can leverage the power to make a PC an efficient tool rather than a time wasting machine.