Yeap you need high end equipment and it works fantastic, but the main issues are for those upgrading, they may find that some drivers may not be compatible, so for those buying a new PC Vista is ok, but for those with XP and want to upgrade, you better check for compatibility issues first, for me I rather stay on rather than upgrade.
I think the hardware industry basically loves Microsoft for that, every new release means they have more sales as users need to upgrade to more powerful systems to make full utilization of the new OS