You can't really blame the people who go to Best Buy or Circuit City or wherever and purchase a PC with Vista already loaded for getting a "dog" system: The reason they're shopping retail in the first place is generally that they have no desire to be "up" on all the latest technical specs of PCs and what Vista requires for a decent experience, so IMO it's the fault of retailers for selling such systems and Microsoft for certifying such systems as "Vista ready" in the first place. They are just shooting themselves in the foot, though -- every consumer that purchases a PC with Vista pre-loaded and has a bad experience with it is just another potential customer for, e.g., Apple... who doesn't ship their OS with "dog" hardware.