These people who think Vista was a great step forward seem to only exist on the internet and nowhere else.
Is this a metaphysics question? I exist outside of the internet.
> dismissing everyone who doesn't like Vista
I wasn't dismissing every argument against Vista. Just this guy's.
There are several valid arguments against Vista. Namely, it has heftier memory requirements (at least 2 gigs) and needs a decent video card ($150+). These are real concerns, and problems XP didn't have.
However, this guy made the blanket statement "Vista bad, 7 good". There's no subtlety or analysis.
As for Vista, we're not dealing with it as it is, but as it is reputed to be. And it has a terrible reputation. The technical merits versus XP can be argued, but its poor image is hard to contest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Windows_Vista.
We take that as a premise, because the technical bits don't matter any more, in the presence of Windows 7. The meat is the use of price as a tool to drive better initial reception of 7 than Vista. There's no need to analyze "Vista bad", because it is already widely believed to be bad.
I know my experience in real life was colored by a few people trying Vista Business early on (on new hardware) and deciding that the new features were not worth the performance penalty. Everyone I know who's done this, including myself, has "downgraded" to XP (as Microsoft allows).
People I know in real life who are considering Vista now are somewhat disinclined to do so, in favor of just waiting for Windows 7.