It seems to have the same annoying functionality as Mac, where the running/non-running icons share the same space. Is that always the case, or is it configurable? I have trouble telling which is running and which isn't (both on OS X and 7) -- I don't do well with shading and stuff like that.
Well, if the Task is unpinned it won't stay on the Superbar after it's closed. That's obvious though.
Aside from that, you can tell which Applications are running by the border around the icon, and the fact that it has a hover color based on the icon RGB values on mouse over. That's something specific to running programs.
Another option is to enable text labels, then only running programs get text labels. Seems like good middle ground.
In my experience though, it has not been very difficult to tell which Applications are running.
Personally, I'd much prefer having a space reserved for running stuff, and another space reserved for programs I can run. As I said, I normally have 30+ icons on my quicklaunch, but I rarely have more than 2-3 programs running at once (I hate having a lot of stuff running, it makes me feel cluttered). It'd be incredibly annoying if running/stopped programs had to share the same space, I'd probably go back to putting all my programs on the desktop so I wouldn't have to look at them.
I'm not sure what you mean, you'd look at the icons on the Quick Launch regardless. If it really bothers you, you can set the Superbar to auto hide.
On a somewhat related note, what they ought to do is decouple Windows's interface from the OS itself, like Linux, and let people rip and replace the interface entirely. If I could replace the Vista/7 interface with XP's, I'd be far happier to use them. Better yet if I could use a stripped down theme like I do on Linux. I realize that it's possible to do this to some extent, but I don't think there's any good way.
Well Windows is such a general purpose Operating Systems, that while there are ways to do this (Shell replacements), they are not very prevalent, especially not on Windows 7.
And also, while idle with no programs open, and on a totally fresh install, ~300 - 400mb of RAM were in use. Is that normal?
Yes. Windows 7's memory manager is much smarter about allocating memory than Windows XP.
Windows 7 reserves memory for caching frequently used programs to make them load faster, the difference is really noticeable in a game like World of Warcraft where you're constantly loading zones. I forget exactly, but Vista was significantly faster at loading Zones than Windows XP was. A bit unscientific, but eh.
Now, bear in mind that just because the memory is in use does not mean that it's not accessible if need be. Unused memory in an Operating System is basically wasted memory.
The Windows memory allocator has a concept of memory pressure, that is, if the PC is strapped for memory and needs more, then the caching engine will release some of it's memory, the .NET Garbage Collector will be forced to collect memory more often, etc.
It's all pretty streamlined, I think it's a waste of time in this day and age to worry too much over readings like this. Unless there is a concrete slowdown noticed in the PC, or you start getting out of memory errors, there's generally nothing to worry about.
Now, this does not completely rule out the fact that a Windows component may be (by flawed design or otherwise) using up more memory than it should, as this is not memory that can be given up on demand like cached memory, but it's something to consider nonetheless.
