Microsoft's Clouds May Break If Vista Boots Up

"That's a huge number of devices. But if there's one device you need, you don't care about the others," Cherry says, explaining the ongoing criticism by consumers.

Both Microsoft and software/device makers share the blame. By continuing to rewrite Vista's code up until launch, Microsoft unintentionally discouraged the market from developing drivers and support early, Cherry says.

And since the launch, some device manufacturers have been reluctant to spend money writing driver software for existing devices on which they earned little margin to begin with.

But many of those issues are being solved, according to Turner.

"When any new operating system is released, it takes time to work through the ecosystem issues," Turner said. "The progress we've made with partners to improve the customer experience is unprecedented."

"We came out around applications and devices in far better shape than we were with XP." But the number of devices and applications has proliferated tremendously since XP's launch, he added.