you idiots that think microsoft makes bad shit are in for a suprise.
hey, why not try and code an operating system for an infinate number of hardware configurations and well see how good you do it.
god damnit you fucks are ignorant when you say "microsoft makes bad shit".
no, they dont. its the hardware vendors that screw up with the drivers for everything.
Don't hear that too often from a Linux user, but it's truth
One of the biggest issues with Vista is exactly what's listed above -- driver compatibility. From what I've read, MS was more than supportive to the vendors to get their hardware compatible with Vista, but the vendors weren't all willing to make their shit work. What does MS have to gain from a bad reputation and their OS not working? Nothing. Vendors have nothing to gain from their hardware not working on the newest OS, because the blame is going to be put on the OS and they've already sold their product.
Out of the box -- Windows has some damn good compatibility. You could argue OSX does, but that's simply because Apple limits the hardware it will run on. There's an infinite number of combinations of hardware in Windows machines. OSX -- you're pretty limited.
I've been fixing Windows machines for 3-4 years now, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. A vast majority of the problems are operator-created. I hear about how virus-prone and crash-tastic Windows is, yet oddly I've managed to stay virus-free after downloading terabytes of software/media across 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista, and now Win7 without the aid of anti-virus software.