Server 2003 with tuning > RH L% Ent, SuSE
Just take NYSE and the LSE word for it.
EDIT:
The articles throw around VSS. VSS is a hook. Microsoft has never had a utility other then NTBACKUP in 2K3 that utilizes VSS. Any System Engineer/Admin knows that NTBACKUP is something you use a fail safe, not an alternative to a backup strategy.
As stated, there's no compression done on Vista images. That's not the worst thing in the world considering they have the ground works for snapshot/image based technology. Anyone out there that has had the pleasures of using NTBACKUP would give their first born for uncompressed image based backup.
If there wasn't the option to turn it off, I'd understand why people are so up in arms. Otherwise, turn it off, buy the product of your choice that will use MS's VSS hook, or if that fails, a proprietary one.