You'd be dead wrong Harvey. Windows 7 has lower requirements than Vista, as I said you've obviously not read much about it =)
The official system requirements are a 1ghz processor, 1 gig of ram, 16gig of HD space and a DX 9 capable video card.
It's more like XP than Vista but still uses the same basic kernel as Vista. Which means it SHOULD be good for everyone, again I'm holding my tongue for at least a few more months here, but overall opinion is that it really is a step forward. Which means Windows 7 is what Vista should have been when it was released. Vista has such a bad name now that they needed to call the new OS Windows 7 just to avoid it, it's largely unwarranted.
Personally I'll keep using Vista for now, it works. When applications start bogging down on this machine I'll get more memory, when they start bogging down on this machine with more memory I'll upgrade to Windows 7, or if the Linux folks ever get their act together switch to that.