This has happened before with XP, I don't know whether some of you guys are too young to remember that, or just have selective memories. I saw a thread over on our partner site Neowin and a guy compiled a list of quotes from their forum users from when XP launched (we can't do that hear because we didn't have this forum then) and he replaced Vista and XP with a generic new and prior OS label, and it read exactly like the comments I see now.
The fact is people don't like change, everyone complaining about aero and its requirements now are just like those that complained about XP's Fisher Price look and requirements back then. Vista will still run on mid end systems of today, just like XP would then. But the fact is any system built in the last year will run Vista out of the box just fine, just because your 2 year old system won't isn't a reason to bash Vista.
Sure there are bugs, but really there aren't many. I ran the beta a few months ago and everything ran perfectly except VLC (had to drop to classic interface) and my wireless network card (on a desktop). I realise out of the masses there are going to be issues, some severe, many not, but this all happened with XP too.
Do you guys not remember the HUGE problem with nVidia cards and infinite loop errors in XP? I think there is even a thread on that here from back in 2002 with several hundred thousand views.
Vista is more secure out of the box, has some new innovative features, looks better, and will be the only Microsoft OS being sold with new comps from now until the next Windows release. It is not like ME because with ME you had 98se which was nearly identical or you could switch over to Windows 2000 which was a better OS in every way except gaming at the time. With Vista you have no other choice, the bugs WILL get fixed (if you are even expierencing them), and DX 10 will be required for gaming in the upcoming years.