Vista is the new ME.
Totally. They are already talking about Windows 7, which will be a huge seller when it becomes availible just so that people can get Vista the f*ck off their machines. The exact same thing happened with ME. It was extremely similar to 98 SE that everyone had, but crashed all the f*cking time so that when people who bought OEM machines that came with ME had a chance to get XP they leapt at it. Now all the OEMs are shipping Vista machines...
I'm a pretty big MS hater, but I have to admit that XP is pretty solid. It crashes so rarely compared to any other version of Windows. I still hate configuring it, the UI in general, etc, but its not bad, really.