Most of the Vista hate, IMHO, is based on 3 things:
UAC - This was a problem because whenever poorly coded 3rd party applications were requesting privileges to run (not just install). It also didn't play well with some hardware, causing the delay for the prompt to come up to be really long.
Timing - It came out during a time when computing power available in machines was growing at a pretty good clip. If you had a 2 year old machine and tried to install Vista on it, likely it was well below the recommended specs to actually do anything. If that same situation had happened today, it wouldn't have such a big impact.
Drivers - I can't even count the number of printers and video cards that I have had to upgrade due to bad/non-existent Vista drivers.
2 of those problems are not directly the fault of MS.
On a more Windows 8 related note:
I just finished my 30day free trial of Start8, a product of Stardock that removes most of the problems that a typical user of Windows 8 would have. Basically, it replaces the new start menu with a fully tweakable Windows 7 style start menu. Plus, it is just $5. I cannot stress enough how good it is, even if you don't really mind the new Start menu.
It is also available in a bundle right now, with Decor8, a product which adds some more customizability to the start screen, which is normally only a choice of maybe a dozen colour/patterns combinations, for $8.
https://store.stardock.com/product.a...=ESD-SDS-W1220