Since I use the old apps, I will continue use the XP until it die completely, or I buy hardware for 7 so much fast that I cannot see the SO-SLOW-WIN7-UI that make me always angry. It simply doesn't matter how much you has cores or GB ram, Win7 cannot react fast...

Have you actually used Windows 7? If you get the 32 bit edition all of your old programs should still run fine, even the 16 bit ones if they ran on XP. I installed Windows 7 on a 7 year old average Dell desktop with a 2.8ghz P4 and 1GB of RAM. It boots just as fast as XP and runs just as well. This Pentium 4 is probably in the ball park of Atom processors which Windows 7 has been optimized to run efficiently on so its no surprise it does so well on a P4. It has a crappy integrated graphics chip that I had to force XP drivers on in order for it to work on 7. But even with old drivers, and a large resolution monitor it was still able to handle the Windows 7 Basic animations just fine. It still plays Youtube just fine. And the Windows 7 Basic animation effects, etc can be turned off. But I don't think they use any more resources than Luna on XP.

If you have a lot of RAM Windows 7 will cache stuff in it, otherwise its a waste to have. This RAM is still available for use when you need it. On low RAM systems Windows 7 does a pretty good job at conserving RAM.

I have used it, and my impressions with it are that with 1Gb RAM the Win7 machine is barely usable, with 2Gb it's way better but XP still feels more pleasant. And please don't advertise the 16bit applications running fine, if they did on the XP. It's just untrue. They messed up the NTVDM really bad in Vista, and in Windows 7 it's actually even worse. The bugs are numerous and overwhelming, and MS doesn't seem interested in fixing them (or doesn't want to consider them bugs, which is the same). It's a real shame, but if you want to run an 16-bit application (DOS or 16-bit Windows) on Windows 7, then you should do it via Virtual PC/XP Mode. It's the only safe way. Yes, NTVDM is effectively dead now, even on 32-bit Windows. All that is from personal experience, because I am (or should I say was) supporting a bunch of 16-bit software as part of my job.

Do many people still actually use 16 bit software, besides playing old games? Almost everything 1995 and newer is 32 bit. Any company still using 16 bit software has had 16 years to upgrade to 32 bit. Sure some software may have stayed 16 bit into the late 90s, but by 2000 everything new was 32 bit. Thats still 11 years to move to 32 bit. These companies are probably better off staying with old versions of Windows. Chances are their computers are just as old as the software they are running then anyways.

A friend of mine has 512 MB of RAM on his main PC.
He forced me to install Windows 7 on it, as much as I told him 'But it won't work properly!'

Surprise, surprise.
Windows 7 only used 200 MB of RAM out of 512. Windows 7 Basic, new wallpaper, some gadgets, and 10 tons of applications.
Yet... It ran fine.
In fact, much better than I expected.
When running more than 3 apps at once, it lagged a bit, but not enough for the user to get angry.

Also, my 16-bit applications/games run fine on Windows 7.
Even some DOS applications... but unfortunately, the text is slightly corrupted, making me unable to use those.

It depends on the user maybe. It's the same as with the framerate in the games. Some people claim that 10fps are sufficient for comfortable gaming, while for others even 100fps are too low.


Well, mine don't (Win16 apps, not DOS). But with DOS it's even worse, I agree.

I tested out Windows 7 on my Pentium 3 Dell desktop with only 512MB of RAM, and it actually was usable. Takes roughly 1:15 to boot. And its probably the processor limiting this more than the RAM.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgtYmLUQ5wA

After I got online I ran Windows Update and it found me a driver for everything missing, except for the integrated graphics. Since it has a Creative PCI sound card, I even tried Dr. Sbaitso after I installed audio drivers and it worked. Dr Sbaitso is an old text to speech DOS program from the early 90s for Creative sound cards.

windows vista was not that bad. it was hyped as bad, and the not so tech savvy jumped on board

Windows Vista started with some issues, which is to be expected with the huge change in the OS version number. Most programs were quickly fixed, but people went off of those first impressions which was really ignorant on their part. Windows Vista is a great OS though 7 does slaughter it, and with good reason.