Re: After Windows 8, was Vista's bad reputation REALLY deserved?
Hmmmm it all depends really.
My experience of Vista from day one was as follows -
Installed on a dual core machine with 2GB of ram with a clean bloatware free build it ran just fine. I never had any problems with the two Vista machines I ran (with OEM copies of Vista 64bit) and in fact the best version IMO was Home Basic as it did all you wanted with less stuff thrown in.
However, if it was installed by Dell/Toshiba/Fujitsu/Asus/Acer/HP etc. etc. with the general lack of attention they give, the dodgy pre-release drivers and masses of bloatware that was designed to work with XP then you got into trouble. That and the low ram and single cores they were pushing out at the time.
I get these old Vista machines in from time to time to service and they are truly awful disk thrashing machines. But I back up the user data and then install a clean fresh build of Vista with all the service packs and latest drivers and it runs as sweet as a nut. Basically as good as 7 does.
Customers are amazed when I hand them back.
The problems with Vista were it needed another couple of months polishing from MS.
The Hardware manufacturers needed to have developed proper drivers (32 and 64bit) for it. They had plenty of warning but had got lazy over XP lasting so long before Vista.
The PC/Laptop sellers skimped on the specs and loaded up the wrong bloatware (if there is such a thing as right bloatware).
A clean fresh install of Vista works fine.