Been a pc builder for almost a year plus, to me XP Pro's still rock! Truthfully, XP has been the most stable release and best liked OS among the windows family.
Yes, vista started off sluggish and defensive (compatibility with third party sftwares). People commented bout its aero design which is sought like mac's copycat. Personally i find vista is a bit too much fancy in design. But nonetheless, its function, like sillingw mentioned, is rather good: UAC (its gd although ppl find it a nuisance, but then complains when their comps get hijacked/intruded/infected
) widgets and etc.
Maybe we have been accustomed to using XP, which gives users the power and control over the system, than using Vista, which sought of is the system controlling us + incompatibility issues (= lost of $ for some...), and thus the negative feelings of it.
And like reviews mentioned, it may have been another hurriedly-released OS since the project was way over-due for several 'intended' launch date for a few times...
But hey, the word's out that Windows 7 (as it is called for now) is bout to be release probably next year? Said to be light weight and all, who knows whats next?
One thing's for sure, without window's team behind all these release of OSes (since Win95), we might nt have pushed computing limits so far and reached so many new levels of products & softwares! Agree?