I gave Vista a four, which is well deservedeven if you include the £100 worth of hardware for it, graphics card and PSU, but as madmatt says its computer evolution and thats obvious just look at it, though maybe some members were wanting something more than "a visual review".
As for buying it preinstalled, my firends have had their troubles, one had to have to use a restore disk inside the first week. And my computer admin at school made an amazinr rig that gets a score of 5.6 in the WEI but can barely logon cause it doesn't like his (fantastic) hardware. Where heres me with an amazingly average PC thats base score is 2.5 and I have not had a problem, I guess it comes down to power over compatibility.
As for features, the only one that really is apparent is Aero, which I'm used to now and not amazed any more, though finnaly putting in Group Policy that can apply to users of standalone computers instead of everyone is a big plus. But we should wait at least a year till we compare it to XP as XPs been out for ages and this is a brand new OS, and for Vista sucking on benchmarks well thats whats gonna happen, new kit needs new hardware, thats how the process has gone and always will.