Windows Vista SP1 installation circle of death

It turns out that the auto-update function of Windows Vista (ON by default!) downloads SP1 for Vista and leads to a continuously rebooting system after install for many users (see thread on Microsoft forums here) User echostormfury summarizes his extremely frustrating experince with M$ tech support:

3 hours on the phone with Microsoft Technical Support did not get me anywhere except to a "professional level technician" that asked me right off the bat to pay $249 for the incident support
[...]
So I now have to migrate my data out, reinstall Windows, and salvage my files in a new install.
[...]
Points Learned:
Microsoft Sucks (Relearned)
Microsoft Windows Vista Sucks (Relearned)
Microsoft Windows Update should BE TURNED OFF from Automatic Updates (Not feasible or practicle, but I'd rather be hacked and whored than risk losing ALL MY FILES again due to stupidity rather than devious ingenuity)
RAID with Windows is trouble (sync a backup instead daily, or image weekly)
A likely culprit: AVG may be contributory to this problem
And did I mention, Microsoft Sucks?

Microsoft you owe me 14 hrs of my time

my first Windows Vista experience

After hearing and reading a lot about Windows Vista, I recently had my first experience with it. For an experiment I am currently conducting at UZH, I borrowed ten identical laptops from our competent and helpful IT services department. I received ten seemingly new HP Compaq nw8440 machines with Vista Business. Their specs from the system preferences: Intel Core 2 T7400, 2.17 GHz, 2 GB Ram, 80 GB HDD. The windows performance index (is that the correct translation for Windows-Leistungsindex?) of those gizmos was 4.2 (anything above 4 indicates a top machine, according to system info). So a very decent set-up. However, the continuously blowing fan was the adequate sound track for an experience that felt slow and clumsy. Despite the advanced speed of the system, responses were slow, a lot of HDD access without any applications running. An update of Windows Defender took more than five minutes during which the system was inoperable. I found the frequent security warnings and announcements extremely irritating. Even native Windows-System applications that are rooted deep within the system, such as Defender or Update, caused the screen to fade to grey and displayed a frightening warning message ("Windows defender update is about to launch, are you sure you want to proceed?"). To sum it up: It was a horribly annoying experience. I am so glad that I switched to the Mac, I'd never want to work with Vista. It feels bloated, clumsy, and slow.