Ive been usisng it since it came out
I downloaded it then M$ sent me it
It needs activating as before and still tries to phone home
but the downloaded beta that I got was *pre-activated*
Imo its an improvement on xp mostly eye-candy wise (but I like eyecandy) but it does have a lot of new features but I read that they will be releasing another beta before the final b/c of all the feedbck.
If you use office at work like me and still need to do some work on your home box (I mainly use outlook and excel) I'd recommend it