"Now I've seen Vista I wonder how a company of that size can get something so wrong"
Perhaps because it's a company of that size.
Perhaps because it's a company of that size.
A software idea can be built many ways and usually more than one of these will be "right". But the moment you have a group of people with equal control and conflicting "right" ideas, you end up with something quite decidedly "wrong".
Small core development teams, with one visionary produces better, more usable software. For me, I will always take a product that feels easier to use than one overstuffed with obscure features. Hence, I use a Mac as my primary machine (also flit between Debian and occasionally XP).
Worse: it took 43 people just to build the shutdown feature.
http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-c...
This article will tell you everything you ever needed to know about why Vista turned out the way it did.