7.1 is a lot of speaker if you don't have a good sized room that you can spread the speakers out, otherwise you won't hear the definition with the extra two speakers and I'd guarantee you wouldn't be able to tell the difference over a 5.1 setup.
My roommate has four
Mirage bookshelf speakers and
their matching center channel and it sounds amazing.
Another friend has
Mirage's Nanosat 5.1 system and it sounds amazingly good for their size.
After listening to many things at Ultimate Electronics (including the setups above) I really can't suggest anything else for the money.