Why use Vista so soon:
-DX9 Games run 10-15% slower
-The user has even lesser rights
-The Aero-GUI uses tons of Ram and CPU power
-The OS is more limited and expensive
-You need special hardware and drivers to run it
-The OS is more buggy than XP when it comes out.
While I would agree with some of those remarks, what has happened here is not too uncommon in other software products.
It's fairly often that development tools are released in several tiers of varying price (each differentiated by what features have been crippled or removed).
Where Microsoft hasn't really shot themselves in the foot here is by releasing "budget" level versions of the operating system. As eluded to, the average joe-user isn't going to know the difference until they get burned with the need to accomplish something that can't be done with the tier they purchased. The average joe-user isn't going to see any other option but to upgrade to the next tier. (If they're smart, they'll return the software where they bought it and pay the difference)
Warren is absolutely correct.
I'm not a Microsoft lover by any sense of the word. I've seen them destroy great (albiet naive) companies with their shrewd business practices. But, they're certainly not going anywhere. In fact, I'd argue that stifling them doesn't make them weaker at all. They have also been really good about giving away certain products lately (such as the entry-level versions of Visual Studio).
The reason why the OS is so bloaty is BECAUSE of all of the configurations it has to support. Granted, there are some eye-candy things in there (which I typically shut off), but a lot of it is a catalog of drivers and supporting software people have come to expect to be there right out of the box... Something the Linux camp will always be playing catch-up on.
I find the figure about DX9 games interesting. Is this because it will have to be emulated through whatever version of DX (MDX?) ships with Vista? Considering most of the processing time spent in most games is in the hardware, I wonder how accurate that statement will be in practice. In other words, if games under DX9 run in such a way that do not max it out, how much of an actual impact is 10% through the emulation layer?