I'd guess its not so much haters as some people who have genuine issues with that buggy piece of rubbish...

:P
I remember when XP first launched there were similar tales of woe, I'd guess (I wasn't in the trade then) that when 98 and 95 were released there were similar tales.

Down the road when Vista's successor (linux ) comes along there will be similar tales then...

Personally I'd love a copy of vista, so I can learn how it works, at the moment I'm stuck with 1 XP license between three PCs, having to reformat one every 30 days sucks. And the virus I got trying to get round that limitation sucked too.