Sorry Die Hard, that is just not true at all. I have a Vista box and have tested it with several games. On the same box loaded with Windows XP Pro, Vista performance is about 15% slower across the board. That is a dual-core Intel CPU with 2GB of RAM.
Llama and I worked on a Vista laptop for over 6 hours at the last CON getting it to run any game smoothly. We finally did. There is something inherently wrong with an operating system design which requires that type of expertise in order to get applications to run correctly.
The perception that Vista runs faster comes from those who had an atrocious installation of Windows XP. If you left any Microsoft operating system to its own devices, after about 3 years it would be a complete mess and performance would be abysmal.
People moving from those poor installations to Vista, would certainly gain performance. But then again, if those same people re-installed XP, they would, potentially, get even better performance gains.
Vista has a lot of design flaws in it which are being corrected in Windows 7. Windows 7 is the operating system Microsoft should have shipped the first time. I will be so glad when Vista is buried.
After 6 months of using it and not being able to print to a network printer, not be able to share files, not being able to run most of the Microsoft development tools without hacking the registry, not being able to install SP1,....I was allowed to get it off my computer. It was so nice to get back to work again and not have all the fraking compatibility problems.
The inconsistency of the experiences, from user to user, are a big red flag things are very wrong with Vista. Yes, it is just like Windows ME, in that regard.