Windows 7 - the gap is closing

When Windows 2000 was out I had poisoned some thread with the observation that the window of opportunity for Linux was closed since MS finally had an OS that worked. Looking at the "Linux desktop" years later, was I correct? Not totally wrong for sure. Now we have Windows 7 and my impression is that the gap between Linux and Windows is closing together with another window of opportunity.

Windows 7 is a new Windows. Trivial, but undervalued. Any change is a great recommended way out of depression (buy a new island - house - car - dress - move furniture). The Windows 7 balance between the low learning curve and great feeling of change is excellent. Things look different, are arranged differently and better, but are still easy to find. No problems like Office 2003 -> 2007 UI redesign.

New task bar mostly compensate for the lack of multiple desktops; arrangement of folders into libraries somewhat compensate for insane file layout, undone links, and primitive file systems.

Windows 7 is not slower than XP, it just favors systems with many cores. Of course, a speedy Linux is still faster, but not dramatically. Windows prefetch has been improved greatly and now Windows is occasionally faster.

New graphics output works great for Windows and the funny XP feature of a movie jumping all over the screen on its own when the player window is dragged is cured. Linux achieves the same at a price of conflicts with composing, so I would say Windows takes the lead here. The Windows media player (DRM aside) is nearly as good as, say, VLC (transmitting abilities aside). However, my personal impression is that MPlayer on Linux still provides the best quality with both very low bit rates and hardware stressing high bit rates.

Windows 7 comes with the latest and greatest IIS 7.5 and, contrary to XP, can be used for Web development out of the box. My guess is that for a casual Web developer ASP.NET is as good as Ruby, so Windows and Linux are on par here.

UAC has been tempered and now unobtrusively provides some false feeling of security. Good for corporate environments and not a show stopper elsewhere.

Thus I conclude that Linux is still better for everyday tasks like Web, or email, or nontrivial data analysis, or that Web development which is not .NET, but the gap has never been so narrow. Before Windows 2000 the Windows vs Linux thing was Unstable vs Working (or, more sincerely, random crashes out of the blue vs predictable crashes when bugs are hit). Before Windows 7 it was Stagnating Standard vs Dynamically Developing Choice. Now only Choice, including customization, is left.

Offtopic: Price is not a compelling reason to switch since the "I use it because I cannot afford anything better" idea cannot be detached from it.

I ask myself: "who cares about choice?" Whatever I answer, my next question to myself is: "if so, why there is that much Linux talk about 'average user'?"