First of all Vista is not as bad as people thinks. Some thoughts:
1. It is true that is very heavy. Regarding RAM, getting a computer with 1 gb or 2 gb is easy and cheap. Regarding CPU, Vista is indeed CPU intesive, and that's the part that makes it heavy IMO, it has a lot of processes in the background, and the sum of all of them makes a considerable HEAVY.
2. OK Vista is heavy, but is unstable? The answer is no IMO, I remember having more bluescreens with the now sacred XP when it didn't have any Service Pack.
3. Driver support? Vista driver support is good. I don't have any idea of what kind of printers or stuff that people say doesn't work with Vista, maybe dot matrix printers from the 90's or what?. We don't expect Vista or MS to do miracles, for example I have an ol digital Olympus Camera. The drivers that used in XP were very buggy, in fact were Win2000 drivers. Expecting for Olympus to release drivers for that old camera will be foolish. On the other hand, take nVidia drivers support for example. They at first offered terrible performance, and no SLI support, does MS is guilty about that? I heard people around the internet and in the real world telling stories like "in vista your thumbdrive won't work", I won't explain more on this, because the point is obvious.
4. Security. I don't remember Vista having problems like the ones XP had, like the Blaster Virus. Blaster was a real mess if you guys remember well, it was a nightmare! Doing RPC and shutting down your PC in a minute wasn't a good idea, you know. But everybody has suddenly forgotten all that
5. UAC. This is were MS screwed up. Is kinda annoying, and a poor solution to security problems. And the "Average Joe" that opens attachments from unknown people, will still click yes to an sudden UAC Prompt asking to install "MEGA SUPER UBER EXCLUSIVE TOOLBAR" kind of stuff.
6. Minimun requirements: they are not so high nowadays but people pretending to run Vista with an old Celeron and 512 Mb of RAM are just plain crazy, and I include "the geniuses" at MS Marketing department for making the Vista Capable and minimun requirements. What happened? Laptops with just 512 mb of RAM were advertised of running Vista in all its glory, but we all know how they performed. Doorstops? Prety so! But what happened, the average consumer was unsatisfied, and from word of mouth Vista started to have a bad reputation. Now even where are Laptops selling with Core 2 Duo, and 2 Gb of RAM, people still think that Vista will run like shit on them and will prefer XP instead. The same goes for big corporations, that will still prefer XP even with pretty good systems.
6. Versions and Pricing: Home Basic shouldn't exist. Plain and simple. Vista most advertised thing was the eye candy. How come you have a Directx9 videocard and don't have the so deserved eye candy then. That would cause a lot of dissapointment, and also make people think that the Eye Candy just was all bullshit. As for pricing is obvious that Vista is too damn expensive
7. Windows Seven: People says that MS is rushing the next version of Windows because Vista it's a failure and that's the reason is going to be released just 3 years ahead of Vista. Everyone claiming that is just plain ignorant. Windows and Office releases were always separated by a 2-3 years period. XP to Vista was a big excepction, but people seemed to forget this again. And Seven looking the same as Vista now, is a ridiculous claim, Vista looked very similar to XP in the first releases. Seven is not even in BETA right now, and everyone claiming that it will be more lightweight tha Vista is just a fool (even with Minwin kernel stuff). AFAIK if that happens it would be the first version of Windows that is lighter than the last one.
8. Social Phenomena: I think Vista opinions and reactions are getting worse over time. I remember that when VIsta was just released enthusiasts didn't talked so bad as Vista as now. Even here in ET people was happy testing the BETAs RCs and stuff. But suddenly flaming Vista, and glorifying XP became the socially acepted thing in the IT world, and everyone thinking different is considered just crazy.
That's what I have to say about it. I have to say that I dual boot, and still use XP a lot more than Vista, but I also use Vista frequently.