My problem isn't so much that some XP features are indeed more intuitive (and less cumbersomme) than Win7 (although that statement is by itself very true, nevertleless).
My problem is that lots of my (admittedly a bit exotic) hardware does not work any more with Win7 because there are no Win7 drivers for them. And I am getting a bit tired of having to junk half of my peripheral hardware every time a new operating system is released.
Examples: My USB to 4x RS232 box from Tripplite, my hires USB document scanner; my expensive Clairo soundcard (there are Win7 drivers but they make win7 crash), my PCI parallel interface card (I need this for certain engineering equipment that uses the D25 printer port for control) and a few more.
But Win7 is superb in ONE thing: The Windows Media Center ap. I love that and use it as my home theater center. For the rest, I do not see much improvement over XP with Win7.
So I have installed them both in a dual-boot configuration. This also allowed me to compare the two extensively, also speed-wise. And guess what - Win7 boots a bit faster than XP (but not by much) but is considerably slower in execution for lots of my user software! Maybe that would not be the case if I upgraded my other Windows software as well (Office) but I am not going to shell out another $300 for Office just to get some speed improvement under Win7 with a lot of other (new) Office features I will never need.
My conclusion: Microsoft business model of trying to make money by introducing new products that are (deliberately) poorly compatible with legacy stuff while the only real advantage seems to be a more spiffy user interface, is obsolete. Or in plain English: Microsoft is in danger.
In that respect, Google seems to me the real innovator on the block and will be the software giant of the future. That company really impresses me (and no, DEFINITELY not Apple. Making phones thinner every year while relying on proprietary user platforms for market share is NOT a good business model either!)