Windows 7: A Step Backwards?

I upgraded to Windows 7 for two reasons; 1) they were going to cut support for the purchased copy of Windows XP I had been using without [many] problems for several years, and 2) Windows 7 is shinier, and I like shiny things as much as the next primate. I suppose fish, birds and some insects also like shiny things, maybe even more than I do, but that's beside the point.

While Windows 7 initially worked, unfortunately it's not as backwards-compatible as I'd have liked. Upon installation, I found that the following things no longer worked:

• No networked printer. It simply isn't detected. Ever. I therefore had to switch to a USB printer connection, so now only 1 computer in my network can print.
  
• No "documents" folders on networked drives. I used to have my "My Documents" folder on a networked drive, so that it could be shared across all my Windows computers on my network. With XP, I could tell Windows, "My 'My Documents' folder is over here, silly," and it would happily switch to the new location. Unfortunately, now that Windows 7 indexes the documents folders, it doesn't allow you to put them on a network drive because it cannot index a networked drive.
• No searching on networked drives. With XP I could right-click on my networked folders and click "Search" and then conduct an exhaustive (i.e. slow) search of the directory tree. I didn't care how long it took because I rarely ever did it. To my surprise, Windows 7 completely lacks this searching feature. Searching in Windows 7 is only done through the Windows indexing service, and the indexing service only indexes local drives (or networked drives that have local backups).
• Keyboard wasn't working (fixed now). At first, my keyboard would drop keys, some keys wouldn't work, and some keys would make other characters appear. Randomly. When I contacted Logitech's customer support I was told that my 2-year-old keyboard was "too old" to work with Windows 7, and I was told to "buy a new one". After weeks of frustration with the keyboard I almost did buy a new one, until a mysterious update from Microsoft made the problem vanish! Now my keyboard works perfectly.

Aside from that... meh, Windows 7 seems to "work". Upgrading to Windows 7 has left me with one lasting impression; they took away features from it that I was using, where Fedora Linux, the desktop linux distribution I also use, adds features with every release. Hmm, interesting.