Vista is problematic and I have suffered greatly, personally, because of its flaws, so I am certainly a vocal critic of it, but I don't understand the whining about systems requirements. Most machines you can buy these days are Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM or better, and in my obviously limited experience that's sufficient. A $600 laptop from Dell gets you that much.<p>Yes, you can't run Vista on a really old machine, which lots of people still have. It doesn't strike me as a valid criticism unless Microsoft fails to make clear that a given machine will not have an enjoyable experience due to performance problems.<p>I still choose to run XP, but then again I run Xubuntu on a quad-core machine just because it appeals to my neuroses.
This new resistance to higher system requirements is interesting in the context of ESR's "World Domination 201" (<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html#id286667" rel="nofollow">http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/world-dom...</a>),
which looked at the 16-bit and 32-bit transitions and predicted that the 64-bit transition would shake up the computer industry again, in 2008. In theory, the middle of the bell curve of computer users would be buying 64-bit systems with 4+ GB of RAM this year, and if Windows cracked under this requirement, Linux or Apple would have a chance to break into the mainstream.<p>But we're halfway through the year, and 4GB of RAM still doesn't seem to be the median for new computers. Is it because we're finally satisfied with what a desktop computer does? Are smaller, lighter laptops changing the market? Or are retailers and hardware manufacturers deliberately hitting the brakes, having watched Vista go sailing off a cliff ahead of them?
Vista reflects the time: all surface, no content improvement. We get the flashy interface, but no new filesystem etc.<p>ReactOS might replace Windows in the future.