I can tell you from personal experience that there are many concrete reasons to dislike Vista. My family runs a small business out of the house and I was the go-to tech guy for all the laptops in the office. This can't be anything but anecdotal, but all the time that I spent trying to figure out how to configure things, how to explain kludgy "innovative" interface quirks, and in general dealing with a beast of an unresponsive OS? I do not believe for a second that that time was a result of some bandwagon hatred.

The annoying interface that gets between you and diagnosing internet problems (beyond the 'giant X on the line between you and "internet"' diagnosis) was frustrating. Ok, I get it, I'm not on the internet. Where do I go to get more information so I can start diagnosing it?

For the sake of 'usability', Windows Vista hid a lot of functionality behind 'ease of use' features that served only to provide the user with less information, making tech support more difficult for no real benefit. Users still have no idea what's going on, but receive no error messages that indicate why.

Vista also added helpful features like the whole 'Let Windows find a solution!' concept, which is great in theory but, in my limited, anecdotal experience, has never once actually provided any sort of solution. The closest I've seen was yesterday, when Windows 'found a solution', tried to implement it, and failed.

They spent a lot of time and engineering making a 'usable' OS on the surface, but all it was was a pretty sheen over top of an OS that didn't, at its core, work significantly better in a lot of areas.

Windows XP was an OS I disliked strongly, but tolerated grudgingly. Windows Vista was an OS I actively discouraged people from getting. Windows 7 is the first version of Windows I've ever recommended people upgrade to, but Windows 8 looks like another step in the wrong direction.