Gio (Mrs. Polo)

Surely Vista runs well on millions of differently configured PCs. The problem is almost certainly your PC’s hardware or drivers for said hardware, which are usually written by the hardware vendor and not Microsoft.

Have you ever tried installing Linux? Sometimes they won’t install on relatively standard hardware, either. Often when they do install, they’ll only make limited use of the hardware you have. If they’ll use it at all, you’re likely to spend hours or days weeding through web forums trying to figure out how to get drivers working for certain hardware (like a RAID array).

Or how about OSX, which will essentially only install on Macs?

Just sounds to me like you need some perspective. Windows does what it does well, considering all it does. That may not be for some people, like you, but I suspect the problem is mostly on your end.

cool aluminum case
expandable (may be able to keep computer beyond 3 years)
ability to backup data on separate hard drive
can add a bluetooth drive later on
works with wireless n if you get the wireless n card
can get up to 3 tetrabytes of hard drives

Solid hardware and OS X makes windows look like a toy, just compare the colour pickers, floating dictionary definition window, the font management, built in spell checker etc and windows just can’t compete it feels so bare bones.

Expose is the most important thing to happen to the desktop, well since Apple started offloading the desktop to the GPU in 10.2, it really changes how you use a computer. Compared to Flip3D which is really just ALT+Tab with a flashy less useful interface if you deconstruct and analyse it.

ohh and the font rendering, absolutely heavenly for a typography fan. Makes cleartype look… well shite.

All the applications are so well designed, you never get things as well made as textmate/cssedit/adium/transmit/etc on the windows side.