Hardware, Maintenance and Networking in Windows 7_804

Hardware, Maintenance and Networking in Windows 7
Introduction
As we head into the holiday week, it's time now to finish what started earlier in December to analyze what's left in my series over what makes Windows 7 worth the upgrade (or not). As I have stated all throughout this series, we all (or as least the majority of us) know someone who for some reason didn't like Vista (which includes even my own freaking mother, sorry to say) and have been hoping for something better. Thankfully, my analysis to this point leans toward the positive side on practically everything up to this point, as the numbers here show:
Desktop UI: 3-0 100% (3/3) Interactive Elements and Actions: 2-2 50% (2/4) Default Software Packages: 7-2 78% (7/9) Overall: 12-4 75% (12/16)
Yes, that's right: seventy-five percent. That is definitely one of the best possible results to have at this point in the game. The question now is: will the pattern continue to hold or not? Well, get your game face on 'cause it's time to find out. As I have stated before, I am not going to analyze enterprise features like BitLocker, AppLocker, etc. due to a lack of resources so you'll have to go elsewhere for that. With that out of the way, it's time to start the final quarter -- and this time, it's all about the hardware (or rather, how Windows 7 deals with it) so we're going to discuss networking subjects, device management and troubleshooting methods... and a side helping of maintenance tasks to finish things off.
Correction Note: Those numbers are no joke. In part three, I scored the results to that point at eleven out of fifteen. After recounting the numbers to prepare the review of the analysis to this point, it now stands at twelve out of sixteen instead. My zxcsky9632 apologies for the error.
Networking
Without going into too much detail, networking is heavily changed since XP... and also the same as under Vista, so forget being able to share anything other than the public storage facilities on each individual computer, period. It's just too dificult, and also seemingly impossible. And you say the HomeGroup option is supposed to help with this, right? WRONG: It requires ALL the computers involved to run Windows 7 -- not Vista, not XP, and definitely not Linux. Worse, it requires an IPv6 pathway (via Teredo or otherwise) and not every computer and/or network device out there can properly send IPv6 signals quite yet (in fact, this contentious issue prevented me from testing HomeGroup connections in the first place!) Not a nice move there, Redmond -- give us our old sharing methods back! Even the network and sharing center that enables some aspects of resource sharing and the location-based network categorizations were unable to save this clunker.
Verdict: Not good enough
Device Management
This is yet another half-baked attempt at simplification: combine one view for both devices and printers, yet keep the actual management of the devices themselves in yet another part of the operating system. Sure it sounds good in practice to have a centralized place to configure your devices by combining that functionality with that of the old printers and faxes utility -- but if you're going to do that, why not go all the way and merge in the device manager as well? Having two places for two related tasks is not only inefficient, but a pain in the a-- for those who aren't as knowledgable about the subject.
Verdict: Not good enough
Device stage, system backups and recovery tools on the next page...