Vista is the absolute worst version of Windows, worse than ME. And now, everyone who paid for a computer that included the price of Vista included, will have to shell out at least another $120 less than three (at most) years later, just so their computer works properly.
Vista is the New Coke of operating systems.
My son has a legit copy through some MS developer’s license. He “never” upgrades, clean install only. He loves it so far.
I installed Vista onto my laptop that had XP, using the upgrade method. That ran like pure shit. The disk was CONSTANTLY being accessed. Big mistake.
I installed Windows 7 on the machine, but as a fresh install, and it runs great. I’d guess the fact that I did an upgrade before was likely 90 percent or more of why it ran like crap.
I’m running Windows 7 64bit on my desktop, and Windows 7 32bit on my laptop. I’ve had very few problems, I’m quite happy with it.
Jump on a bandwagon much?
From a marketing perspective, I actually might agree that Vista does = New Coke. But that doesn’t mean it’s “bad”?
Vista is a heck of a lot better than “conventional wisdom” seems to think. Yeah, it’s a bit bloated but a lot of that quite frankly is due to MS misreading the market in terms of how the public wanted security. In a corporate environment (which I supported) we kept machines on NT over 2000 due to it’s terrible uptime.
Want some bad Microsoft OS’s?
I upgraded from Vista to the Win 7 beta, and then the beta to the RC (yes I like to live dangerously) and it also took a long time - about 8 hours each time. Still, almost everything worked perfectly afterward (I did need to reinstall the wireless card drivers) and 8 hours reading a book and tapping next every now and then is a lot easier than reinstalling all of my myriad of programs and setting them up how I like them.
Saying that Vista is worst than ME is ridiculous hyperbole. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had a crash on Vista, when with ME, I’d sometimes use up that one hand by lunch.
Well, according to Microsoft itself, Vista may not actually be ‘bad’, but it is ‘less good’. 
Microsoft misestimated where computers were going when they started work on Vista. They expected more people to have higher-end computers, and that everybody would have the higher end graphics cards. They didn’t plan on the big slump, and people starting to buy more budget machines. They tried to fix Vista in a short time, but failed.
I’m personally waiting to see Windows 7 Mobile, which is supposed to be netbook compatible. But I’m also looking forward to buying a touchscreen laptop in the next few years.
Vista has a horrid UI. Especially the crippled folder explorer. Took out a bunch of useful buttons, including the up buttons, then replaced it with a breadcrumb. The breadcrumb is okay, but there’s times where an up button works much better. Why won’t those sheep molesters let me configure my buttons like XP? (other then it cutting in on company sheep molesting time that is)
Here’s all win7 has to do to be an improvement:
I actually blame the OEMs for this more than MS. The system requirements for Vista were no mystery and the OEMs ran out and slapped Vista on every piece of shit computer they had. MS was not holding a gun to their head, they could have still been loading them with XP. Those “budget boxes” had no business being vista machines. Blaming MS for this is like blaming Blizzard because world of warcraft runs like shit on their 1.4ghz celeron with onboard graphics.
So how is this “clean install” business going to work? I have two copies of Windows 7 Home Premium ($50 special!) on their way in October. My desktop has some extra HDs but my laptop only has one. Will this require a HD wipe? Will I need to re-install my original OS (XP-64 :Vomits: on my desktop, and Vista on my laptop).
Don’t know where my install disks are at the moment. 
I’ve got the 7 RC running on my Dell Mini 9 netbook and it doesn’t seem any slower than the XP install was. I’d say it’s already compatible. But if they bring out a version that’s actually optimized for netbooks, so much the better.
You may well be right, but in the OEMs’ defence, a new OS is a great way to sell more computers. Not a good reason I know, but a new revenue source will always override technical considerations, in my experience.