it's called windows 7 because its the 7th OS that microsoft has developed
The new taskbar i feel is still a lot more useful than the dock in Mac OS X. Mac did pretty much revolutionize how desktops work with their dock, since now even windows doesn't use icons on the desktop since they are all now located in the taskbar. The one nice thing about the windows version is how if you are using, for say, firefox, each screen you minimize goes back to the actual icon on the taskbar and not to the far right side that is basically like the old taskbar for windows. Having all windows of each application loacted on the actual icon you used to launch it is pretty handy, esp when you hover your mouse over it it gives you a preview of each screen side-by-side so that you can pick the one you were looking for. Pretty nifty i must say.
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