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made big price increases, forced people to get far more powerful machines or upgrade their current ones, and produced a dizzying array of different versions of Vista. I can't even count how many different "Vistas" they have.

In what freakin universe is Microsoft forcing people to use Vista?
Do you normally have a hard time counting to 5, thats the number of versions of Vista, including their Enterprise edition?
At least you can buy Microsoft software almost anywhere, and at a discount. Unlike Apple.
What big price increases? Vista Home Premium upgrade can be purchase around $150, Apple charged $129 for Tiger.

Do you normally have a hard time counting to 5, thats the number of versions of Vista, including their Enterprise edition?

I think you're forgetting Starter and the two versions required for the EU market. Since most of these versions are available as both retail and upgrade packages, you have more versions. And then there will be the OEM versions.

It's a lot more than five. I guesstimate it as 12-15 different Vistas.

You can buy Tiger discounted. $80-$100 generally, lowest I've seen is $70. Also you can buy the family pack with 5 licenses that runs around $140 now at Amazon. Microsoft, with a clearly inferior product, charges more across the board. And Tiger doesn't have a bunch of peon second-class (or third-class) users. Nor does its slick desktop features and solid UNIX underpinnings require expensive high-end machines to run it since even my old 1.4 Mini handles it pretty easily.

Personally, I think Microsoft should give Vista away. And I might turn them down even if it was free.