Are you running Vista yourself and having problems? Or are you just absorbing someone else's possibly isolated problems? The hard fact is that NOBODY could put out a "perfect" operating system right off the bat, and if your friend's company took the dive on Vista right after its introduction, it's for one of two reasons:

A: They're a software or hardware company that has to develop for Vista to stay on the cutting edge, and didn't have a choice

B: They're stupid. Most people who don't absolutely need to deal with Vista are waiting. I will start thinking about Vista when software I run starts to need it, and with 64 bit XP already on the shelf, that might be a long time.

Look, to keep an operating system growing with the technology, you have to update it once in a while. If you're someone like Microsoft, you have to strike a balance with staying in beta long enough to kill every last problem (by which time the technology will have bypassed you again and you have to start over), and turning out something that's definitely not ready for prime time. In practice, what happens is they release something in the middle--you get a system that works almost all the time, but is buggy enough around the edges that it needs a year or two of massaging to bring it up to its full reliability.

Drug manufacturers can't come out with a product that kills 30 percent of its users, but they're never going to be able to come out with something that has absolutely zero side effects, either.