It seems that you have to go via the windows taskbar for everything. I found two ways to pin a folder there to mimic this kind of behaviour. You can make toolbars and then select things there (which is outlined here) or you can go the more difficult route of letting windows think a folder is a program and putting a nice icon on your taskbar (which is described here).

It shouldn't ask you for drivers as part of the regular install.  There is a time during the install where you have the option of loading drivers for your hardware if you have specific drivers you'd like Windows 7 to load, but it should install default drivers for most everything.

Well, this has mostly gone ok for me. I've upgraded from XP to Windows 7 and everything has worked fine except for my sound. This seems to be a problem lots of people are having where after a couple of days every single audio device stops working.

I'm guessing its a lack of up to date drivers; using windows 7 to detect drivers doesn't seem to help as either they are behind the times or looking in the wrong place. I'm hoping a fix comes out for this shortly as nothing else has worked and I'm not keen to go back to windows xp until it is fixed.

A weird flaw when its been far better in just about every respect.

EDIT: Manual re-install of drivers from manufacturer's website fixed this; some of the Vista drivers worked for me.

Does it give you the option to copy the driver over from a USB stick? I.e. if you have a USB stick plugged in to your laptop, when it lets you browse for files are you able to view the USB drive?

Try re-burning the Win 7 ISO using the lowest possible write speed.  I've read on a few forums (after doing some research) that this was one of the more common solutions for people having the same problem.

My impression was that it is possible it just causes your drive to be completely wiped, which I was prepared for anyways. I do have a 64 bit machine so I do not understand why it won't work.

It most certailny is.

Speaking of bits, is anyone aware whether switching from 32 bit 7 to 64 bit requires a primary partition wipe? I run 32 bit Ultimate currently but I'd like to switch to 64 bit Pro, unless I can get my hands on 64 Ultimate through MSDNAA.

Ah. I thought you were talking about upgrading while keeping all your old files and settings, not just starting from scratch on your old computer.

The short answer: 64-bit operating systems are faster and more efficient than 32-bit systems, especially when working with large sets of data.

The long answer:

32-bit systems, regardless of OS, are subject to an addressing space limitation of 4 GB (32 1s in binary is equal to 4,294,967,295 bits, or 4 GB).  Basically this means that a 32-bit computer is limited to working with a maximum of 4 GB of data without resorting to using virtual memory.  It doesn't matter how fast your processor is, whether you're running Linux or Windows, or what kind of cooling you have.  If you're running a 32-bit OS, by definition, you're limited to 4 GB of RAM.

64-bit systems have an addressing space limitation of 16.8 million terabytes.  That's not a typo.  In reality, we're not even close to being able to work with that (physically) but 64-bit systems are able to address an absolute shitload* more memory, which makes them not only faster but much more capable of working with large sets of data.  As such, 64-bit systems are better at handling things like video processing, 3D rendering, huge databases etc.  Most gamers will tell you that a 64-bit OS is the best way to go if you want the absolute best performance.  Even simple stuff like watching movies will give you better, smoother playback in a 64-bit system.

There are some compatibility and other disadvantages but in general the benefits tend to outweigh them, for the type of person that needs the most processing power.

*Scientific term

Yeah, it will work.  I think you may run into some permissions problems if you had folders set as private or you're trying to get into a folder like My Documents specifically owned by a user, but if I remember right there's also a way you can administratively override some of that stuff.