The truth is that very, very few people are going to be upgrading their existing systems to Vista. To make it work well, you’re really going to need a new computer. If you didn’t buy your PC in 2006, I wouldn’t even try to run Vista on it.
OK, so the first reason that Vista sucks is that, no matter what version you get, it’s likely to be expensive. No matter what Microsoft ends up charging for it, the only way most people are likely to be running it is when they get a new PC.