Of course, it basically boils down to an underdone release, made too early with inadequate co-operation between Microsoft and driver manufacturers. The article lists 7 major areas where the release really failed: 

Instability

At launch, Vista was much less stable than XP, and the problems weren’t limited to high-end hardware - users with low-end & standard setups also reported instability. Considering that improved stability was one of the biggest promises Microsoft made for Vista, users were understandably upset.

Incompatibility

If a desktop application didn’t follow Vista’s rules for behavior, Vista wouldn’t let it run. The program would fail to load, crash on use, or eat the user’s data, depending on the development infraction. This even affected such mainsrteam programs as Acrobat Reader, iTunes, Trillian, and dozens of others.

Hardware incompatibilities could be just as challenging, and Vista also shipped without support from major VPN manufacturers, including Cisco.

The sheer number and range of compatibility problems meant that every user would be affected in some way.

Performance

New OS releases can suffer from performance issues – but Vista showed dramatic degradation in performance on release. This poor performance affected even the most common of tasks.

User Account Control

Vista brought  improvements in the overall security of Windows, but one of the mechanisms that helps enable that security comes at a high cost – it’s incredibly annoying.

User Account Control, or UAC. Even if you don’t know what it’s called, if you’ve used Vista, you’ve used UAC. It prompts you whenever an app tries to write to an area of your hard disk or registry that Windows finds suspicious. This seems like a good thing but UAC prompts every time the installer does something suspicious. A problem compounded by the fact that each prompt looks and behaves differently, even though they’re all asking for basically the same thing.

To make matters worse, none of the UAC prompts tell users what the application is trying to do. When you click that Allow button, you still don’t know what it is you’re agreeing to.

Activation

Activation was introduced with Windows XP, and Vista activation includes the Windows Genuine Advantage software, which periodically checks in with Microsoft to ensure that the copy of Windows you’ve already activated remains genuine. WGA isn’t foolproof though, and it can be easily confused by something like a BIOS reset.

Version Overload

In the good old days, there were two distinct versions of Windows: one for home users and one for corporate users. For home, you bought Windows 98; IT departments bought Windows NT. With Windows XP, this trend continued, despite the fact that both the home and enterprise versions used the same core.

With Vista, Microsoft added three more versions of Windows, removing crucial features from the low-end release and forcing power users who want access to both work-related and enthusiast features to shell out for the $400 Ultimate edition.  The upgrade path from XP was also inflexible and expensive.

‘One More Thing’

To put it bluntly – Vista didn’t come with any ‘killer’ apps or new features.
 

The full article can be read  here

A ZDNet blog post contains a bit more ‘measured’ information about it along with responses from one of the guys who reported the exploit.

• Win + d – show Desktop
• Win + f- search for files
• Win + g  – cycles through Gadget selections
• Win + l – lock your computer
• Win + m – minimize windows
• Win + t  - cycles through Taskbar programs
• Win + u  – activate the ‘Ease of Use’ Center
• Win + x  – cycle through the ‘Mobility’ Center
• Win + Spacebar  – bring Gadgets to the front

Also – if you use the Quick Launch toolbar, pressing the Win key + a number (from the top row of the keyboard) will launch the corresponding application in the Quick Launch toolbar.

e.g. if your first 4 Quick Launch icons are Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint – If you press Win+2, that will start up Word, Win+4 will start Powerpoint and so on. This only applies to the first 10 QuickLaunch icons Win+0 being the last). 

Once major manufacturers such as Dell and HP have cleared their stocks of machines loaded with XP, then new machines will only be issued with Vista, and anyone wishing to revert to XP will have to buy Vista Ultimate or Vista Business and then legally “downgrade” to XP.

Smaller PC makers will be allowed to buys XP for resale through til January 2009. Cut down versions of XP will also remain available for use on machines such as the Asus Eee PC.

The decision comes despite vociferous protests from large numbers of people unhappy with Vista and amid calls for XP to be kept on-line until the release of the next Windows version 7, pencilled in for sometime in 2009.

Last week, Microsoft said it would provide full technical support for Windows XP through 2009, and limited support through 2014.

Microsoft said that this release followed an earlier preview that was downloaded some 300,000 times and has resulted in a lot of feedback, and as a result, a number of quality improvements.

One improved area is the system’s ability to search across machines. Windows Search 4′s remote discovery service will now let users run data queries between Vista and XP machines, for example.

For now Windows Search 4 is available to download from the Microsoft web site, however, in the future it will be included in the Windows Update service as an option, the firm said.

Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Executive Steve Ballmer showed off new Windows features based on software it calls “multi-touch” that will be part of Windows 7, the next version of Windows, which Ballmer said was due out in late 2009.

The ability to use touch to give users fingertip control of their screens could help revolutionize how computer desktops and mobile phones are controlled and would be an alternative to existing mice, keyboard and pen-based user controls.

During a joint interview that kicked off the Wall Street Journal’s three-day D: All Things Digital conference, an annual gathering of the computer industry elite taking place north of San Diego, Ballmer said touch screen controls was one example of how Microsoft would improve on existing Windows software.

More Info: Reuters

“Vista sells on almost 100 per cent of all the new consumer PCs around the world,” the Microsoft CEO proclaimed. He added that the operating system was also selling on, “45 percent of all of new business PCs”. Which is enlightening, since business users are about the ony buyers of new PCs that get a choice.

Ballmer, speaking at a press conference at Microsoft’s new Strategic R&D centre in Herzeliya, said overall, Vista, “has had a good unit volume market reaction.” He said he was happy with sales of the product to date.

The Microsoft CEO addressed comments that the company’s new operating system was half-cocked, and that user response to the OS had been luke warm at best.

He admitted there was no question there were things people had not responded to well and that “application compatibility in Vista was not as high as many of our customers would have liked.”

He added: “That is improving, not because we’ve changed Vista, but because the applications are getting upgraded to be Vista compatible.”

Whether Vista really is an upgrade, or just something of a weighty and awkward downgrade can still be argued, but Ballmer puts the problems down to the “tricky” balance between compatibility and security.

“What we have learned is that maybe our customers care a little bit more about compatibility and a little bit less about security” he ventured. He added that it always took people a while to get used to new things and that Vista was no exception.

“When you change the look of your product, you always think it looks better, but your users always have to get used to the new one”.

“I think we’re going through something of a process whereby Vista users are still getting used to Vista after moving from XP”.

Ballmer also noted the Xbox had been “a funny product for us” and that the company had struggled for a while trying to figure out how to make money out of it.

“The same applies to Zune,” he laughed, “except we still haven’t figured out how to make money out of that one.”

A survey by Evans Data questioned 380 US software developers and found that just eight percent are developing applications for Vista.

Almost half the respondents are focusing development efforts on Windows XP, while more than one in 10 are still writing applications for Windows 2003.

Linux was the preferred development platform for a further nine percent of those questioned.

John Andrews, president of Evans Data, claimed that developers are taking a wait and see approach following Vista’s mixed reception.

“The general theme has been a slower uptake in the user market so most people at the corporate enterprise and commercial world are staying with XP,” he said.

Andrews also pointed to the rapid growth in popularity of the Mac platform among US software developers.

“Although unlikely to displace Windows volume, Mac OS experienced 50 percent growth as a primary development platform and 380 percent growth as a targeted platform during the period,” he said.

Next year, however, should see a more positive response from developers to Windows Vista. The survey found that one in four intends to focus on Microsoft’s latest OS in 2009.

To be quite honest, the average home user and, dare I say, ‘power user’ shouldn’t need to enable this account for any reason what so ever. Those individuals who have already enabled the Administrator account and more importantly those who work exclusively with it are just asking for trouble and clearly have no idea about general system security.

If you have a genuine reason for enabling and working out of the administrator account, then please excuse my comment above as it doesn’t apply to you.

Enabling the Administrator Account

All warnings aside, if you still feel like being a cowboy, then here’s how you can enable and log in under the Administrator account.

First you’ll need to open a command prompt in administrator mode by right-clicking and choosing “Run as administrator” (or use the Ctrl+Shift+Enter shortcut from the search box in the Start menu).

Now type the following command:

You should see a message that the command completed successfully. Log out of Windows, and you’ll now see that you have a choice to log into the Administrator account.

There will be no password for this account.  Once you are logged in as the Administrator, I strongly advise that you set one.

Disable the Administrator Account

Make sure you are logged in under your regular user account, and then open the command prompt in administrator mode (as above). Type the following command:

The administrator account will now be disabled, and shouldn’t show up on the login screen any more.

A week ago, Microsoft delayed the release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 because of a problem that could lead to data loss when running the XP update in conjunction with its Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System program. It also halted automatic updates to Windows Vista Service Pack 1 because of a similar issue.

The software maker on Tuesday said it is releasing XP Service Pack 3 for Web downloads, and resuming automatic updates to Vista Service Pack 1, after developing a filter that will prevent machines running Dynamics RMS from getting either update.

The filter is not a fix for the incompatibility, though Microsoft said it is working on that as well.

“A fix for this issue is currently in testing at Microsoft and with customers, and we hope to make it publicly available this month,” the company said in a statement. “Until then, Microsoft is advising Microsoft Dynamics RMS customers to not install either service pack.”

Those already running Dynamics RMS with one of the Windows updates should contact customer support, it said.