The biggest problems with Vista were a) Lockdown of "Program Files" directory and UAC which meant existing applications had tricky to fix issues (sortable by I

The biggest problems with Vista were a) Lockdown of "Program Files" directory and UAC which meant existing applications had tricky to fix issues (sortable by IT folks not by end users). Microsoft had been saying for years that many of these practices weren't allowed as part of the windows certification program (I'm sure I did most of this work for Win2K certification) b) Requiring new drivers for things like printers / scanners. Hardware vendors didn't want to do rewrites for old hardware (there's no money in it for them) so peripherals that used to work got "broken" by Vista. Windows 7 was better because UAC was toned down and both software and hardware vendors had done the security work a few years earlier for Vista. Folks who did the XP->Win7 upgrade had a much easier time. From a security PoV Vista was needed.