DreamScene was pretty cool when it came out , same as Aero was ground breaking. What was that screen rotation thing called ? ( Didn't use it much, but was nice eye candy) Vista got a lot of bad press when it hit the stores and wasn't really forgiven till the service packs were released. Dont get me wrong i like Vista, was dual booting on my last laptop with that and the Win7 leaks ...err....i mean beta lol .I personally think its faster than XP and you cant deny it looked sexy when it came out.
I may even throw it on VMware and give it another bash