Think we're all at the conclusion that W7 is a glorified Vista. Your also right in the respect that not many have budged from there original impressions of Vista. In any event people will see W7 as they want, so no point in trying to argue about it.
Longhorn included several features which are now in Win7 but the problem with Longhorn was that it never run stable. So they decided to cut those "problems" out and released it as Vista OS. I bet a lot of users agree that Vista RTM has some serious problems e.g. with cable modems, driver unload and so on. With Win7 Microsoft did a great job and fixed all/most of the Vista problems, updated the kernel and created the superbar.
I installed Win7 in Virtual PC the other day to test, and I only have one update that I downloaded from MS. This OS doesn't go live until the 22nd of October? But what if it needs some critical security updates before then, will that not be released until after the 22nd of October as well? Best guess?