When you say "top and side bars", you are obviously referring to the current Maemo user interface? Right? Yes, that would look good on most any device. I think I even recall screenshots of a hacked Maemo running fullscreen on a normal desktop monitor with whatever resolution they had there. It looked as if it was just made for it.

I, on the other hand, was talking about the Maemo 5 user interface. I have to admit I never quite liked it when I saw the first screenshots, so I'm extremely biased and shouldn't be taken too seriously here, but: Everything seems to be bigger in Maemo 5. Buttons, icons... I didn't like it because I thought it was too big and a waste of space on a N810-size screen. So of course I can't think of it on 7". (It all makes sense, of course, if designed for a small phone screen.)