I think Vista is getting a bad rap. When you compare it to every other major OS when it was new, it stacks up. Sure it takes more resources, because it does more stuff. I'm sure if you ran DOS 6.0 you could accomplish some computational tasks faster, doesn't mean DOS was better. New computers coming out can handle it, and as far as drivers, Vista might not support your old stuff, but it will obviously support any computer it comes stock on. I would never buy a copy of vista to put on an old pc, but I'm definately not buying new PC's for my company and taking XP instead of Vista.
Yesterday I had a meeting with a consulting firm (run of the mill IT/networking mom and pop operation) and the guy was in the meeting telling us that his company was a full fledged microsoft partner, and all microsoft certified. Told us about all the new/inside scoop they get from MS. Then 5 minutes later was telling us about how they don't deal with Vista much, and never recommend it, because they don't see any difference. Then when asked about the prospects of Server 2008, the guy basically said, "It doesn't have anything new, it's just server 2003 with a vista interface." Couldn't be further from the truth and anyone that is really in the know would realize that.
I guess it just boils down to too many people listening to media hype, and not really going after it themselves. Then again I see plenty of people who have Vista and aren't happy, but I wonder if other factors might effect that. For example, I wonder if people are seeing XP outrun Vista on comparable machines, which is probably true, but as I said before, Vista wasn't put out to run on all the machines you bought in the last year or 4, it is designed to go on the machines you will be buying for the next three years. Having 2 gigs of ram a year from now will be pretty standard. Another thing that might be changing the way we see Vista is the aftermarket support. I wonder if the "public opinion" (read - media opinion) has changed the ways other companies are supporting it. Kind of like the Beta/VHS or BluRay/HD-DVD fights where the superior product might not be seen in as good of a light or marketed the right way, and all the aftermarket supports something else. I can see how that would change someone's opinion when companies put less money into producing programs or hardware to utilize the new features in Vista and more money in other "popular" os's. Just wondering about some of these things today, maybe I'll do some reading myself.