Anything interesting or new has been scrapped already
Yep... <sigh> As disruptive as it sounded, there did seem to be some promise of interesting newness in the early descriptions of Longhorn. The description of what's actually coming out in Vista sounds like XP with nasty DRM added along with unneeded 3D GUI junk.
it would surprise me a lot if it was significantly worse than XP
Hopefully you're right (I like XP a lot better than 98 which I liked only slightly better than 95). But I feel in my gut that moving from a long-established 2D GUI to a new 3D one (plus the other Vista changes) might have some issues, though I'd love to be wrong here with a seamless transition.
BTW, I enjoyed and LOL-ed at your on-target THX 1138 references, Red Ocktober! (or should I call you MIK 1138? <1 grin unit transfered from TWM 999 account to yours, and be happy>).
FWIW, I plan to update to this new Windows as I have in the past: when I buy a new PC with it installed as the first OS rather than trying to retro-fit it onto my current hardware to replace the previous Windows version. That'll probably be between a year or two (and probably a service pack) away.