Was Windows Vista a dud?

I just finished reading an article in Australian IT magazine covering statements made by Gianfranco Lanci who is currently the head of Acer.

The article can be summed up with this one liner: "The entire industry is disappointed by Windows Vista," proclaims Lanci. While I am not the head of a multi billion dollar organization I am part of the software/pc industry and I can say I am not disappointed by Vista. Given the choice of a Vista pc or a XP pc I would easily choose the Vista pc. I upgraded my primary home personal computer to the 64 bit of Windows Vista quite awhile ago using my MSDN account version. While I have been challenged to locate native 64 bit software (native 64 bit FireFox anyone?) I have been more than pleased with both performance and stability. I can definitely not say the same for a little known release of Windows called ME or Neptune which never was.

The interesting thing with Vista is there is plenty of neat things in there, but they are buried under candy coated interfaces so folks don't talk much about them. So why would a personal computer manufacturer be yelling to the world that Vista was a failure? I can only surmise that the global community wasn't inspired enough to buy new Acer pc's just to try it out when they can purchase it for their existing pc. I think the underlying unspoken comment is that PC sales didn't skyrocket and rather than blame their own lack of innovation Acer is blaming Windows Vista for not selling their hardware. What I see, but apparently Australian journalists don't see is that its not Microsoft's job to product software to sell Acer brand computers; its Acer's job to product a PC attractive enough to entice us to purchase one.