I just finished installing Windows 7 on my home laptop in dual boot mode with Windows XP.

To partition my hard drive, I used Partition Master 3.5 Home Edition, it’s a lesser known freeware but it works seamlessly.

Windows 7 has easier and quicker installation process , plus it got all the hardware drivers on my machine. . It certainly boots up faster than Vista (which was my biggest headache using it). Looks promising to me.