Windows, drivers, third-party software, a reflection

Few days ago I was watching my feed list and I saw this article. Judging from the title "The key to Windows success? It’s all about the drivers", I thought it wasn't really interesting, more precisely I thought it was the same article as always so I didn't read it. Today I was reading Massimo Santin's blog that is reporting the same article I didn't read. I decided to take a look.

The article talk about a well-known argument but the thoughts expressed are really interesting. I've only few little notes, I think that "crapware" is an important point of the discussion and it wouldn't be underestimated. The largest part of performance issues depend on the quantity of third-party software installed but I have to agree with Ed Bott when he says that the majority of stability issues are due to badly-written drivers.

Surely OEM need to pay more and more attention about drivers and third-party software. What's your thought about this?! Read the article and then answer this question: do you really think that Vista is worst than XP or do you agree with Microsoft when it says it's not a Vista fault?!