I was really excited when I read the initial press releases about Vista. It was going to patch some of the glaring flaws in XP, add some great new features and functionality, include new scripting abilities, and simplify making advanced configuration changes. It was to be to XP what Windows 95 was to Windows 3.11, a huge leap forward.
However, each successive press release made me more and more dismayed with Vista. It seemed that each press release told the disappointing news of how Microsoft had decided to push some feature or function from Vista back to Longhorn. Over the past few months, I have gone from being excited about the new version to being completely apathetic. I can't stand the idea of needing to upgrade my hardware (which runs XP extremely well) just to be able to qualify for the minimum requirements of Vista.
From all the documents and press releases that I have read, it seems that the only major noticable difference between XP and Vista is the fact that Vista has an extremely bloated "shiny" new interface. This doesn't impress me very much because I really don't care at all about what the interface looks like. Actually, I always try to minmize the interface because I find space used for appearance and not for functionality is a waste.
That's my rant and my feelings about Vista so far. I'd love for someone to provide some examples of how Vista is different than I perceive it to be.
Please feel free to put your feelings about Vista here as well.