I can definitely see this. I like a lot of things about Vista. One of them is not the speed.

I'm wondering if MS just decided to optimize the user experience aesthetically and let the hardware catch up on speed, figuring that in 4 years everyone will be running 16 cores and an SSD.

I think the average hardware has not caught up to Vista yet. I just reinstalled it after 6 months when I upgraded my computer to 2x Raptor Raid 0, along with the existing 4gb ram and quad core. It's running really great now. I can have all my work apps open and then load up a game like COD4. I think the hard drive transfer speed was the biggest bottleneck.

I wonder if Vista will be best run in a future "Vista Light" edition that will be hacked together by software pirates... though I guess it will probably be best run on a solid state drive.