You mean VMWare Fusion?
You see, while Fusion gives the guest OS full access to the CPU and RAM the same way it would as if it was running natively, everything else is done via software.
So your experience with Vista is not reflective of how it would run on an actual PC.
And Fusion itself isn't 100% stable. I could guarantee you that your crash in Fusion was the result of Fusion itself. I've had Fusion crash on me a couple of times and it was not the result of Windows at all. Fusion just disappeared for no reason and closed.
However, good hardware is not cheap for most people, I mean, I can buy expensive hardware and run it, but not everyone has that buying power, specially in todays frail economy.
Thats absolutely not true. You can build a good AMD or Intel based PC (Core 2 or Phenom) with parts from very reputable manufacturers for around $600. You'd even be able to play modern games, except Crysis, at high settings and better than the current consoles at that price. You could go even cheaper and still get reputable parts just without the ability to game. It's funny that Apple said they don't know how to build a computer for $500 that isn't a piece of junk. Well, I could build one for $500 thats more reliable than the 20" iMac and faster.
Good hardware is absolutely not expensive.
And don't try to tell me that a $600 HP or Dell is not good either. They all use Asus, Gigabyte, Biostar, or MSI motherboards with Intel or AMD or nvidia chipsets with Western Digital and Seagate HDDs, Kingston or Crucial or Samsung RAM, etc.
Very good hardware is very cheap these days, despite what Apple would have you believe.
Which is why Microsoft has gone back down in hardware demand with Windows 7. According to Ballmer, Windows 7 should run fine in 1GB ram.
I've run Vista on 1GB on 2 PCs and 2 Macs and I never had any issues with speed or HDD paging or anything. The only time I noticed a bit of a difference was when playing UT2004 on one of those PCs and after exiting the game it took a second or two to redraw the desktop.
Vista runs abolutely fine on 1GB for most peoples uses. I have 4GB right now and my little monitors show that I never really use more than 1GB in total.
I refuse to turn this into a flame war. So I won't. But I'm just tired of people spreading lies about Windows.
(though this could be the fault of developers.)