Meaning, now you know the only way to do things in it and know, that all other ones are wrong, so no wonder they work badly?
One thing i can say for sure - no OS is useful when used out of the box, it needs lots of tweaking to become useful. It holds true for Windows, it holds for MacOS, it also holds for desktop-grade Linux.
Both desktop grade Linux and Windows come with lots of bells and whistles on, and need tweaking and setting to get rid of them and other generally annoying features and start to work efficiently.
The difference is, out of the box Ubuntu Linux comes with as much GUI niceties as Windows Vista, but they all work fluidly along with math software on a laptop that can't even boot Vista and have XP running like preoccupied.
lol No, meaning once I got over the lame hating I realized it actually isn't so bad. I've used them all, if I'm gonna be stuck with a GUI, then I'll take Windows. It's infinitely flexible, and it runs more than a screensaver.
Seriously, I'm a geek and all, but even when I "hated" it, I never had trouble with it. It just worked - nothing special, no herculian efforts or marathon configuring sessions, it just worked. So..... if you do well, it's not the product.
The only "good" GUI I used that I actually liked from the outset was BeOS, but that died a horrible death. OS2 had promise before 95 came out and took all the good points of it and crushed it.
It's ironic that the people who claim anyone who "defends" Windows from lies and myths is a 'zealot', when in fact it is they who are the true zealots (referring to an earlier post here).
Oh and BTW, I got my MCP in Win95 on pure knowledge, no studying, just took the test on what I already knew. And it was more of a Network OS test than anything else, which was a little unexpected (at the time).
Also, my work and home machines are identical - P4 3.2's with 2GB of RAM. The difference is that at work I have a crappy video card and internal sound (vs a GF6600 and Audigy here), and Vista runs JUST as fast there as XP does here. Just as stably too, if not more-so. (XP Pro, of course.....) Aero is lighter than people want to realize.