I know you didn't really mean that as a 'flame' per se, but ignorance isn't something anyone who knows me finds applicable.
I full well acknowledge that there are people using Vista, but it is NOT a fact that such is the norm.
There's a reason Intel corporate offices aren't moving to Vista.
There's a reason that out of 7 hospitals near me, 5 moved to XP from Windows 2000 only last year, and are not moving to Vista.
I encounter hundreds of computer users in my work. In the deployment of Vista for typical and not-so-typical uses of Windows, Vista has caused problems for more users than I can ever recall in the complications with previous migrations, except for when Windows 3.0 gave way to Windows 3.1.
I've even heard suggestions that 64bit Vista with plenty of RAM is better; well, it's better than 32bit Vista, that's true, but 64bit XP is better than both.
I'm a developer targeting Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac. I thought the Amiga was a genuinely innovative machine, and I'd write for it if there were still sufficient customer interest. I have no anti-Vista interests.
I compare the operating systems side by side, on the same machine where possible. I use demanding applications, like 3DS Max, AutoCAD, Visual Studio, the Adobe Suite - and in all cases, Vista is slower than XP and some features of Adobe don't even work (Adobe Audition simply can't work, yet).
It's true that Vista does run, isn't any worse that NT 3.1, or those first weeks of Windows 3.1 (when all the 3.0 applications were crashing, badly) - but then the general expectations of what we should expect from an operating system have advanced, and we have every right and reason to be very particular. I'm especially troubled that XP was killed off much earlier than is reasonable.
I know there are examples of Vista computers in use that do what their owners expect of them. I'm fairly certain that Mac owners are getting what they expect from their new OSX machines, too.
When it comes to putting money into a new system, though, comparing Vista to Vista in a contrived test doesn't quite mean anything other than there are people who see what they want to see. That's not a valid analysis of a comparison between, say, Vista, Mac, Linux and XP.
Since Mac doesn't run 3DS Max, I need to run Windows. When I choose the Windows to use for it, I'd rather have Windows 2000, but some applications required XP, and as of service pack 2, XP was ok.
For a student purchasing a machine that is likely to be needed for college, there may be specifics required by the school that demands Windows of some flavor (the school might, for example, insist on some applications that have no Mac counterpart). Prerequisites like these make the choice for us, and now that XP is officially off the table, our choice has been limited for us. I simply find that irritating at the least, because when I compare the operation of a 64bit XP machine, with Max, Illustrator, two virtual machines, Visual Studio, a couple of browsers, Photoshop and Nero burning a DVD - all at the same time - against the same usage pattern under Vista, I find that Vista is lacking performance and occasionally can't even run what I need.
For that matter, I can't use a Mac for this profile, either - but I can't promote XP, and most people don't use their computers like I use mine. At present, my iMac is used primarily for cross-platform development compilations and testing. I'd like it to do more for me, and I can't run XP or Vista in parallels with sufficient performance for applications like 3DS Max to make that a viable option.
Yet, when someone else I know is considering a computer - I don't typically jump to a suggestion until I know what they intend their computer to do for them. I might even be able to suggest Ubuntu for some, and, frankly, that works in some cases.