This sums it up nicely.
Yeah I can't agree that that's been my exact experience.
The hard drive grinding in Vista is due to a few things: the much better indexing and search service Vista has over XP; super fetch which over time learns to predict and pre-load things you mostly use; and system restore and defrag which are on by default. I turn off super fetch, system restore and defrag. And the sidebar-useless to me.
Explorer and multimedia issues? I don't know what he's on about there-never had an issue with either.
File copy and delete issues, lack of drivers, graphics corruption, orphaned windows, poor reliability are all pre-SP1 issue, which I admit I never did use.
I read lots of similar negative reviews but not any that were post Vista SP1 or SP2.
I nearly upgraded all my 3 Vista SP2 systems to Win 7, until I got a work laptop with Win 7, and found other than the marginally quicker boot time, there was nothing else there that made the upgrade worth the money.
But whereas Vista's issues were performance, Win 8's are usability=Metro is innapropriate for a non-touchscreen environment.