Windows 7

Windows 7 is what Windows Vista was supposed to be: the replacement for Windows XP. For the most part history will show that Microsoft puts out a 'quality' product every other release. They use the interim versions to hone the valid ones....or more to the point they let the public be the guinea pigs and take the complaints and fix the next version. VERY BAD quality control, but they are MS and can get away with it. Microsoft is and will at least in my lifetime remain on top of the business world simply because they have to budget to make what would seem to most companies catastrophic errors in releasing products such as Vista. Enough of why Windows can get away with this and let’s jump into some of the features and how Windows 7 became what it is today. Let’s start with the notorious UAC feature.
User Account Control is still part of Windows 7. However, Microsoft has tweaked the feature so that it's less intrusive, but it's not clear whether that means you're actually more or less secure than you were in Vista. UAC was one of the biggest changes in Vista. It made the OS overall more secure than previous versions of Windows and that was probably the biggest complaint about other versions of Windows, the security. Overall I feel it was a step in the right direction. There is only so much you can do to secure an OS once it’s in the hands of the user and I think the overall goal of the UAC implementation was to try to get the user to understand what he or she is doing could potentially infect their PC. The feature ended up making everyone from the educated user to the novice mad or frustrated at the fact that you constantly had to enter your log-in information. I feel that they now have it almost where it should be in Windows 7 by giving the user options. Windows 7 was also a success due to the testing that the OS went through before release.
The public testing process for Windows 7 involved one limited-availability beta and one release candidate, and constituted what some have called the largest shareware trial period ever. As buggy and irritating as Vista was, Windows 7 isn't. Instead, it's the successor to Windows XP that Vista was supposed to of been, and finally places it on competitive footing with other major operating systems like OS X and Linux.
Another huge improvement in the security of Windows 7 is how external hard drives and USB drives are handled. If you recall in Windows XP and Vista these external devices would auto run as soon as they were connected. This ended up being a very bad idea when it comes down to security. We have all seen what hackers have done with this flaw in design in the past.
Windows overall is headed in the right direction by tightening security, making the OS more stable, and always improving on performance. Windows 7 is by no means perfect but it is a huge step in the right direction. I’m not sure if Windows will ever be toppled when it comes to business because they just get it. People can argue that other OS’s are more stable, have better security, and better features but the simple fact is we really don’t know. The other Operating Systems that are available are not constantly under attack and the shear amount of users that use Windows compared to others is staggering. So in conclusion I would say that overall Windows 7 was and still is a huge success.

References http://www.cnet.com/products/microsoft-windows-7/ http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2348899,00.asp