Well, I just finally changed from XP to Vista64 as my primary OS (although I've had a secondary Vista32 installation for a while but only used for programming), and I like Vista for many reasons, but the reason I stayed away for a long time is because of UI issues. Now it's always the case that each new OS comes with a bunch of crap you must learn how to disable, like the search dog in XP and the horrible personalized menus. The problem in Vista is that the annoyances can't easily be disabled. For instance the change to full row select in folders. It makes any form of drag'n'drop work very error prone. You drop files into an open folder window thinking the files will be copied there, but because you dropped them on a line that contained a file of a type that happened to be recognized by Windows it can do any form of arbitrary action, like launching an exe with all your dropped files as arguments, or copy them into a subfolder, or add them into a zip file etc. A change of this type is something that should by all standards be a checkbox under Folder Options so I can disable it, but there is no such thing. Fortunately I found a vbs script that fixed the problem. Of course, it's still not like in XP, but now only the filename column is selected. In XP you had to drop something onto the actual file and not just its column for it to interpret it like you wanted the default action of the file you dropped it on.
Another annoyance is that Vista looks into folders for their contents in order to decide what view they should be in. I pretty much always want my folders to be viewed in Details mode. In XP I just configured a folder view I liked and then clicked "Apply to folder" and it would stick. If I wanted a special view on some folders, like my photo folder, I could still do that. Vista tries to be smart, and consequently annoys the hell out of me. Everytime you create a new folder it looks into the folder for its files and applies what it thinks is the most proper view. If there happens to be any form of image file in there it thinks it's a "Pictures and Videos" folder, even if the vast majority of the files are not. It doesn't inherit the folder view from the parent, which would make the most sense to me and be consistent with how folders in any file system normally works. So everytime you unzip a file and go into the folder you might be randomly greeted by huge thumbnail images instead of the detail view.
The removal of the "up" button in explorer is also a deadly sin. Yes, you can do everything with the clickable address bar, which btw is great, but that does not make the removal of the up button a reasonable idea. Many times the up button is just plainly faster as it requires no reading and less aiming and is less prone to errors. I still keep making the mistake to push the last button thinking it'll take me up one level and not realizing that it points to my current directory so I have to push the next button.
