Your ignorance = my experience
Your opinion is skewed cos you only jumped on the Vista bandwagon after SP1. When it launched it was horrendous, worse than the BSOD bonanza of Win2k's first few months. I got far more work downgrading to XP than I ever did with any previous OS since MS-DOS 4.0 back to 3.3, even topping ME to 98. The only Vista licence I have out of a dozen XP and servers is the HTPC for Vista Media Center which is my highlight of a half baked OS.
Windows 7 on the other hand is properly baked even in RC - what Vista should have been from the start. You'll find once you've got the drivers sorted it blows Vista 64 away..