So, I was doing a lot of thinking (drinking? close enough). And I figured out why the VM thing really sucks.
Developers generally test their software on all the major (supported) versions of the OS, like XP SP1, XPSP2, home, pro, 2k, 2k3, etc. The more they test it on, the less chance of it failing on some specific version.
With Vista, nevermind having 6 different versions to test on to begin with, now some of the versions can't be installed on a VM? So, to test my software, I have to own a number of different computers to run different versions of Vista on? That's retarded.
And what else have they done? Lock out access to the kernel
except to signed drivers. And it costs good money to sign them. (And to anybody who says it's to keep out hackers -- I'd bet that they could afford to pay just like anybody else)
What's it sound like they're doing? Screwing small developers who can't afford a bunch of test systems and can't afford to sign drivers they write.