Inferior, yes, but often this is made as some kind of
blanket statement which is pretty much pointless unless it
is addressing a specific limitation of the OS

Lack of 128GB drives support.
Lack of security.
Lack of event log.
Lack of ability of having more then 1 IP address per adapter.
Lack of inter-process protection - a faulty app usually crashes the whole OS
due to idiotic design of 2D graphics/windowing subsystem.

Lack of... well, lack of everything.

Performance also sucks due to lack of adequate file cache manager.

Now moving past the generic concept to a specific scenario,
in this particular case, supporting 48bit LBA would be
gained by a latter version of windows

Correct. Adequate versions of Windows do support 48bit LBAs out-of-the-box.

just a mindless "NT better"

If you would know the innerworkings of these OSes - you would not say this is
mindless.

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation

http://www.storagecraft.com