Well, better late than never UB
Vista is a leap ahead of Windows ME, without a doubt.
To be honest, perhaps I've been a bit harsh on Vista - in time I'm sure Vista will be a very good operating system, it just wasn't really ready for unleashing on the public, and there are a few things that do nothing except put people off e.g. the DRM integrated stuff, performance hit compared to XP, etc. However I do remember a similar backlash when XP first came out - incompatibility with existing software etc... and now most of us are hailing XP as being the best Windows version to date.
We're a race of habit-forming creatures, we don't like change. Vista is a big change in both looks and high-level functionality. Coupled with the fact that a lot of today's hardware struggles with it, and it's going to be a while before Vista is accepted. I'm sure it will be, given time.
All that doesn't mean I actually like Vista, at the moment - I'm going to leave it alone for a bit until I see some reports that it's got a bit better. Perhaps I'll end up waiting a while