My dislike has nothing to do with its inherent functionality - it's the "new" set-up that irks me.
I miss the standard dropdowns and don't like the way the open windows look and act - I want everything the way it was - I'm too old to keep learning a new set-up every few years - 7 is not XP.
If you spend about 5 minutes with the desktop personalization and taskbar/start-menu settings, you can get Win7 to look and almost feel like XP. It's not exactly the same, but it's real close in most important respects.
Personally I like the Windows 2000 look, what Microsoft calls the "Classic Windows" look. XP's default theme is way too "Fisher Price" for me. So the first thing I did with my XP systems was brain damage them back into Win2K mode.
Then, when Win7 came along, I found I could do the same by using the Classic Start Menu, making a few tweaks, and choosing the Windows Classic theme for the desktop.
I have had people come over to where I'm working on Win7 and say "Hey, what are you doing with Windows 2000?" and I have to laugh.
The only thing I can't get to be like XP that bugs me is Windows Explorer. The Win7 (actually Vista) version sucks and I hate it I hate it I hate it. So I went and got a third-party Explorer that works just like XP's version.