Do you guys really believe everything you say? I'm not trying to be a prick but I have to ask. Is it just being inexperienced in the windows platform that makes you think there are these huge issues and instability probs..etc? Have you spent any time actually using it? I'm not talking about 1-2 hours or a week. I mean using it for like 3 months to learn the platform inside out.
Maybe I'm lucky. At work we have about 10 workstations running vista business and 5 notebooks. We also have 100 workstations that are XP Pro. With all the windows hatered, one would think that we'd need an IT staff of like 40 people just managing all these terrible vista and microshit related computers. Sadly we have two and we still have time to chill once in a while. We have some Dual G5's at work too and to be honest, I have to go to those more than our windows boxes but I blame Quark, Suitcase and the Xante printers for most of those issues.
Anyway my home machine is now 8 months old with Vista64 on it. I also put Vista on an old Asus notebook with a 1.6Ghz Centrino and 768MB RAM. Yes it was a bit slower than XP on that box but not that much. Fully usable. Anyway not one freeze or bluescreen on either of those machines so far. I dont even run AV on my desktop machine (just surf carefully).
Ok so the deal is this. 99% of instability is caused by bad and faulty hardware such as bad ram..etc. I've also had flaky unstable OSX machines at work. I could easily say its crap and make a blanket statement but I ran a memtest on it and it was bad ram - on two of the 10 dual 2.5Ghz G5's. If I didnt take the time to figure out the issue, then we could have just chalked it up to sh*t computer or crappy OS which was not the case.
Microsoft caters to all kinds of hardware, its up to the vendor, being Apple, Dell, HP, Gateway or even yourself if you're building your own, to decide what hardware is reliable, what hardware has good driver support etc. If you buy crappy hardware with poor support, then you will end up with a crappy experience.
I dont know what else I can say but its sad that everyone pats each other on the back thinking they are making smart comments but I doubt highly that anyone really knows whats going on. You just hear that something is bad or take one bad experience and feed off it and each other until a grain of sand is turned into a mountain. Reminds me of a whole Mustang vs Camaro debates in the 80's and early 90's. Each one spewing out information they heard from a friend of a friend or maybe drive some beat up car and then decided to use that as an example.
You really want to know what the deal is on Vista and OSX and what people think about them? Try strolling into a large forum with users from both sides where people interact. Something like the forums at Arstechnica. Dont be shy. Check out the mac area, check out the windows area. Check out the hardware areas...poke around the linux area and see what everyone talks about.
PS. Before I get yelled at for not being a mac guy (which is true as its not my main box) but I do have a dual 500Mhz G4 with 1Gig RAM with 10.3 on there. Its in the bedroom because its a bit more quiet than my other boxes. I have a linux box I play with sometimes and I still have my Pentium 60 with OS/2 2.1 - for memories sake
I have a Win2k server running on dual pentium Pro 200Mhz CPUs and its in its 5th year of doing so. Maybe I am different than most and can see the good in everything instead of picking it apart. I like it all and none have ever given me grief.