Yes. I agree, Iroken. Unfortunately, Vista was too many changes in one leap, which I feel was probably the reason for the harsh criticism. It was almost a new learning experience. The good side was, if you did learn, then Windows 7 was a simple step forward.
Up until 6801, and to a certain extent, 7000, My heavily tuned Vista still performed as well as 7.
Whatever the hackers have to say, the Beta release has some subtle changes from 7000. It is NOT the same OS. There are one or two differences even in the menus (Defrag options, for example)
Anyway, I have installed both the 64 and 32 bit Windows 7 Betas and I am impressed. There is no way that I will ever get Vista up to that performance. A couple of minor bugs/annoyances, so far. But nothing serious.