I remember being an early adopter of Windows XP. I was running a P3 733 with 1GB of Ram, It ran really good. There was lots of backlash because of stability issues, but Microsoft really worked hard to iron them out.
With Windows 8 coming out, it feels like Vista, or Windows ME, ALL OVER AGAIN! While Stardock has solved the start menu issue in Windows 8 its annoying that users have to do a workaround on Windows 8 just to get the desktop feel side of things back again. Simply put, you don't release a tablet style OS on a casual type environment the desktop or laptop.