Yes... the comparison isn't as good... I went from 98 -> xp on one of my older comps with a intel celeron 2.4ghz, 256mb ram, no video card and the difference was minimal. I was still able to play Empire Earth alright on xp and didn't really notice the difference at all, and once i went to 512mb ram and some old pny card it ran fine.
Now people notice the difference immediately with vista.
Still vista isn't a fail yet, I'm just not using it until i need it.