Well considering how much was changed, "many months" doesn't constitute time to enough. The fact is that most of the problems that are found with Vista derive from other companies work (drivers, "vista fix" patches, etc) that are not up to snuff. I mean to be completely honest, I beat the crap out of my machines, and I havent had any problems. So if a person like myself, with a completely custom, high end, overclocked PC, with half of my components no having mature enough drivers to work completely in any OS, I find serious issue with the supposed number of people that have problems. OEM's arent dumb. They dont release computers without at least SOME driver maturity.
So I guess if you want the cliff notes version, take this away: Not ALL (or most) of the Vista problems are actually attributed to Microsoft bugs (which are there) but instead immature drivers and middle-ware, and the fact there seems to be so many problems is simply because the most vocal people are heard. I would be willing to bet that apart from the people on here and other forums (a couple thousand AT MOST) most people with Vista are just chugging along completely unaware of much of this heated debate.