I'm a programmer/IT tech as well and honestly I thinking M$ did an extremely good job with Win 7. I've ran Vista since day 1 as well, and wasn't very fond of it, nor it's instability and other issues, but I really do love Windows 7. I do find it funny talking to people who think all these features are new though, when half of them were already in Vista but many skipped Vista.

If you have enough RAM just VM XP on your 7 box IMHO if you really need XP. No sense staying behind 10 years in OS advancements... VMWare Player's latest version is now fully capable of creating VM's and is still free to use. So you can have your cake and eat it too if you really want XP. Dual-boot is another option, but a bit more involved for the non tech savy. Open source is another option for ya. I love when people can't accept change in the technology world... You best pick a new hobby!

- I run RealFlight 4.5 w/ my DX6i radio on my Win 7 box fine.