The panel  is still there. It just default's to being closed when you are using
IE7. When in datasheet  view look closely at the right edge of the view. In the
middle you will see a series of vertical dots with a lessthan symbol in it.
This is the handle to open  the task panel you are looking for. Click on it and
the panel should open and show you the menus that you need.

But I see the panel  and click to open  it up no problem. The
thing is that the links are different. Between IE6 and IE7.

The problem isn't IE7. The panel  in the browser is actually an active control.
The one that's showing up in IE6 is the active control from the previous
SharePoint version. The links you are seeing in the IE6 browser are from
SPS2003, not MOSS2007. I see the panel you see in IE7 in both IE7 and IE6 for
my installation. Microsoft changed the underlying support in the MOSS 2007
Datasheet view from Excel to Access. The panel you are seeing in IE7 is the
correct one for MOSS. The ActiveX control is loaded into IE when you install
Office. Is it possible that the IE6 machine you are using was originally loaded
while using an SPS2003 environment? To update IE6 to the current activeX
control just run the repair wizard on Office. I don't know any way to get the
old activeX control loaded into IE7. I don't know if it would work correctly
even if you did get it loaded.

What you say makes sense - I had a feeling it was active x controls.
I guess I'm not really wanting to load the old active x control into
IE7 though.

What I'm really looking for is a simple way for a user  to be able to
save an excel  spreadsheet to their desktop from a list  - that is more
then just a read-only live view of the lists data. It seems odd  that
the old control has the ability to do so, but the new one doesn't.

I don't think you can create  a synchronized view with excel  in MOSS. That was
the way it was done in SharePoint 2003. The underlying engine changed and is
now built on Access. This provides additional functionality since Access has
more capability for handling data. The ActiveX control was changed to reflect
that. You can still export  most lists directly from the Actions menu of the
list. But I don't think this creates a synchronizing copy, just a copy.