Geez. I guess 2 moderators do make a right. I bow to your combined wisdom, and hereby grovel in a most earnest and humble expression of regret that I ever whispered a syllable of condescension at the wonder that is this forums top-level experts. From the very depth of my programming ilk I could never have imagined that my heart was as a mere clock cycle of time, never amounting to anything useful unless, dare I say, it's beating to the rhythm of your wise analogies and succinct but yet somehow informative reviews as I read them with breathless anticipation seeking if I be so wise those seeds of genuine interest to all whose eyes fall upon them.
Greater still must be your physical prowess for as you illuminate so clearly you've managed, probably through some manner of ultimate mind control, to make your heart beat the same rate whether you're climbing mount Everest or sitting in front of the TV, a skill I do so wish (dare I believe my attendance to this forum may lend me some partial understanding of this power) to emulate, lo someday master. To this very splendid goal of optimism of what can be if I but shut my crude, uneducated trap and read herewith and learn from thou wisest of the wise, I can only beg the benefits that have given you such a lauded, multi-syllabled monocle of wisdom, and may I someday join your ranks, step as proudly through the posts of those like myself of lesser knowledge and wisen them also.
I will wait with baited breath as an undisciplined child, cowering in shame, but willing to aspire to and learn from your greatness, if you will forgive my insolence.

First, for those reading your response and thinking, "oh, this guy's got a 'Honorary' next to his name. He Must speak wisely and truthfully", I must correct your very first statement, oh Wise one. Any OS uses All the clock cycles it is given, whether they are used wisely or wasted; they are All 'eaten up'. Now to the meat.
Aside from your 'general feelings' about Vista, your accumulated 'hate' for some features, bugs, etc. and your specific 'taste' for an OS (I might not want to know the specifics  :huh:), my main gripe is exemplified by your illustrious rendition of an attempt to box me into a corner with guilt that I had dissed this forum, when in fact you've laid the groundwork for my Proof!
As witness to my unfounded ramblings, see where you have used expressions such as 'too little memory', 'dog slow', 'filesystem caching and the shouting of mouthes' (which disses those who may have a point that you fail to invalidate), 'usage stats' ( :huh:), 'expect it to run smoothly' (an unvalidated assumption, probably as reliable as those 'shouting of mouthers' and 'people who bitch'), 'feels smoother than XP', 'able hardware', acceleration purely with shaders, though, since that leaves some otherwise capable fixed-function hardware without acceleration' (simply gobble-d-gook), 'eats up more resources' (what and where, and how is this different from eating up clock cycles and slowing things down, My Point Exactly), 'if my workstation crashed today, I'd be installing Vista' (you would reinstall your OS because it crashed????  :down:), 'UAC..., a trade off between security and annoyance' (doesn't that depend on how often one attempts system functions that call upon this feature?), 'since harddrives is the major bottleneck in my system' (like, your computer is different how? and since when is this not a antiquated bus system issue?), 'More aggressive prefetcher and disk cache. VS2008 starts faster on my 7200rpm...' (apparently you've figured out a way to successfully compare large apples to small oranges), 'Smoother GUI and (non-hacky) live previews' (sorry, but another  :huh:), blah, blah, blah, then, 'default Vista install is too bloated' (by which I assume you mean that it takes up too much space in memory and eats up too many clock cycles doing unnecessary crap).
Seriously, could I refer to this overview as bloat-babble? I rest my case.

Woo-hoo, my babies back online...Whew!
Anyway, this situation reminded me of one of my best friends. He lives alone, is a computer programmer, and has a Ton of porn on his computer. Not the nasty stuff, more like Playboy pics, in the Millions! He comes from a family of hawty-tawty edubacated's that he's damn sure will Not accept him if they knew about his little cache of babe pics. So recently when his brother the dentist (and kids) stayed for awhile, he had to bump up his computer security to 'red' level to hide it all. But if he were to kick off, the general level of security (can you say, "weak-ass OS security" in here?) that he's using would most assuredly no keep his rels from exposing his exposing collection, which would then cause his father, and possibly mother, to have a heart attack, his brothers to burn down his house, and in the process my rare collection of Commodore 64 disks that he's storing for me would be destroyed.
Well, far be it for me to encroach on some good-ole family ravings and destruction when they discover their son's perversion, but lest my collection be harmed, maybe I should consider the protection of my own software stash if he should croak. I'm sure there are many people with items stored at their friend's places that might have issues with the rels if they didn't know about them. In any case, and in particular this case, I'm thinking that his solution should be to keep a copy of his financial data on an external server, make the info relatively easy for the rels to get at, and Really tighten down the security of that collection, just in case. And possibly a living will. And a note about my collection (and maybe throw in that stand-alone William's Defender game machine ;).