Truecrypt is fast. I have it on all my computers and backup devices that handle sensitive information, and there is zero slowdown visible to the user, even for IO-intensive operations. Steve Gibson from the "security now" podcast did his own benchmark where he created a drive image and timed how long it took to defrag the drive, then restored the bits from the image, encrypted with TC, then timed the defrag again. He then repeated the process three times because he didnt believe the results -- the encrypted filesystem ran FASTER. Take the anecdote for what it is, but the principle seems to hold true in my experience too. TrueCrypt is damn fast. It chews a few % of your CPU time when in use, but it doesnt slow things down.

No one else seems to be pointing to the fact that the notes are just a condensed version of the lectures. And if the students learn the material better by reading the notes from someone who was able to understand the teacher rather than by listening to the teacher herself, then the teacher needs to change something about the way she lectures. Maybe she should pass out some students' notes perhaps.

Your machine is still yours, I'm afraid. Sorry to dash any hopes of another conspiracy. Note that running as a non-root user restricts some functionality (which is the whole point), but that functionality can be regained using privilege elevation (i.e. UAC).

"Adds to my current XP2 configuration". I'm not even sure whether that's a coherent thought. If you're asking whether it still runs your old win32 programs, then the answer is yes. If you're asking whether it retains all of XP's configuration mechanisms, then the answer is no. The UI appears much more like Vista than XP.

It sounds like you believe everything you read on Slashdot. Multi-user operating systems protect the integrity of the environment by restricting the behavior of user-installed programs to a narrowly-defined API. Welcome to Computer Science. If you want absolute control of your machine, install DOS. Vista and 7 have increased protection in comparison to XP to guard against modification of the OS itself (root kits). Ideally, though, these enhancements increase the safety of the environment without degrading user experience.

DRM restricts access to content. Operating systems restrict access to devices. The system ships with programs capable of playing DRM-protected content, but that's not an OS function. The vast majority of what an OS does occurs in "hidden processes" if you want to call it that. This fact is not interesting.

The only important consideration when picking an operating system is whether it will do what you want it to do, and if so then how well. If it can't do something critical to your own workflow, then pick a system that can. If more than one can, then pick the system that does it best.

Windows 7 is largely regarded as "better" than XP and Vista because it does more of what people want than previous systems, and it does those thing better than previous systems.