Windows 98 was what Windows 95 should have been.
Windows XP was what Windows ME should have been.
Windows 7 is going to be "what Vista should have been."
However in this case, Windows 7 is barely different than Vista. The only reasons I hated Vista was:
1. Like previous MS operating systems, they relied too heavily on Moore's Law. Only this time it bit them. Requirements for reasonable use were way too high, and hardware didn't catch up until just recently. On the contrary, people were used to their 5 year old XP running nice and quickly.
2. Vendors were still failing with drivers left and right, and then there was the whole 64 bit thing that people had been refusing to embrace.
3. The interface change was "different".
What's actually different in Windows 7? Nada. It was supposed to run faster than Vista, but the closer it gets to release time, the more I hear of "The speed is about the same, but at least our hardware has matured now."
Vendors who didn't build drivers for Vista are finally saying "Gee, we're two operating systems behind so maybe we should support Windows 7." Vendors who previously built drivers for Vista did little to no tweaking to get things working for 7. So now your support is covered.
Virtually nothing has changed other than our hardware finally caught up, and people are adjusting to the "Vista"-esque UI. So once people get used to Windows 7, err, "Vista SP3", the dumb ones will say "Why was Vista so bad?" The semi-smart ones will say "Why did we waste our money on an operating system that's not new?", and the geniuses will be cleaning up on the 2nd-hand market building home Linux servers.