How many times have you opened a directory in Vista only to discover it's being shown using the wrong display format? For example, you might want to just browse the files in "Details" format or see that set of pictures you took at Aunt Bessie's party in "icon" format. Well, did you know that if you hold down the Ctrl key and use the mouse wheel that the View changes? I didn't until today when I did it by accident. Of course, it might be nice if Vista would actually friggen remember the view I assigned on my last visit, but this is far better than having a random view show up and having to mouse around to select the right view...
I hope this helps.
Bill
This is one of those things that really bugs me, too.
Scott Hanselman posted a fix a while back that helped me some. There is also an alternate fix in the comments that may work for some people.
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WrongFileTypesViewInVistaExplorerFolders.aspx