That screenshot is not accurate. You have to work to get it that ugly. (That is, he change the "View by" to large icons). The control panel is incredibly usable with its default layout.
I didn't read the rest of it, no point. I'm using Windows 7 right now and it's great. It puts XP and Vista to shame.
There are a lot of little things missing in XP that annoy me.
My feeling is that all the positive stuff about 7 wells up from the Microsoft marketing buzz. Not a bad thing, since all of the negative stuff about Vista was anti-Microsoft marketing buzz. But it's just as content free.
For me Vista with it's latest updates is rock solid, fast and slick. I want to update to Win7 but I'm having trouble justifying it to myself (mainly just the time factor, but I also think MS pricing is outrageous - they are about double what they should be).