Vista was pretty much as good as Win7.
It was actually better in numerous ways. Few examples:
7 has problems with text painting. In Vista, everything was displayed instantly. In 7, it takes time to load.. for some reason. Example: Open task manager, delayed. Open an explorer window full of a bunch of different files. Delayed. Maximize it, hangs delayed. Why does 7 have such major issues with something no previous OS has?
WDDM 1.1. Caused major issues with multi-monitor setups. It may have fixed the memory issues WDDM 1.0 had (DWM used at least 2-3x more memory in Vista), but at the cost of crippling issues, which you can sample here:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=windows+multi+monitor+lag Vista wasn't issue free, but 7 was worse.
This remained unfixed until Windows 10.
Vista also kept classic features that were removed from 7 for.. no reason. Quick launch, been in Windows since 95, removed from 7 yet kept for some reason, so you could manually add it back if you knew how. Classic start menu.. completely gone, required Classic Shell. Status bar, unused, required Classic Shell to restore functionality. Ability to sort with categories? Restricted to detail view only; required Classic Shell to restore. Right click on taskbar icons, brings up a horrible bordered menu; classic menu available if you hold SHIFT.. 7+ Taskbar Tweaker reverted that.
The only thing I see 7 doing better as a power user is the ability to move things on the taskbar and notification tray. That's it. The OS itself has some better stuff at its core (ability to remove certain programs, better native media support), but overall to me personally it was a big downgrade. 7 feels like the alpha test for 8. It was supposed to be Vista SP3, but then it was moved to its own OS version with a slightly different UI.
DirectX11? Oh, Vista got all that... before Microsoft and Intel abandoned it. Had to switch to 7 when I upgraded my CPU to Haswell-E, and when I had my 3770K I couldn't even use the iGPU due to no driver support.
If only the mass market wasn't full of ignorance and Vista didn't suffer its fate due to driver developers and computer manufacturers ruining its initial launch with poor hardware and software support.