Speed

Thinking about future study/work plans...
Is Windows 7 going to be faster than XP?  Is VS 2010 going to be faster than
the preceding versions?  I'm seeing very positive reviews of these new
products, but nobody ever talks about speed, which is the only thing I care
about.
Is Silverlight going to be faster than a JavaScript-heavy app in a good
browser, eg Chrome?  The Silverlight demos I've seen so far are not all that
impressive.  Two years ago they would have been, but the web has come a long
way.  WPF ClickOnce seems more promising, so right now Silverlight is
looking like a "skip" to me, and WPF is looking like a "give it time to
mature before looking at it".

A lot of discussion with WPF centers around MVVM, which appears to be
nothing more than PresentationModel, which many of us have been using for
years already.  The untestable GUI spaghetti model has been a problem since
way before even VB6.  So, why are so many bloggers/podcasters suddenly just
now starting to talk about it?  What is it about WPF that makes this
suddenly more of an issue?

Thanks,
Mike