You make some good points and to that end, I agree with you, but regarding the beta thing, I will take the constant beta releases over the SP1, SP2, SP3, hotfix after hotfix, oops there goes another massive virus in-the-wild , Super "Patch Tuesday" crap any day.
I mean, don't get me wrong - I think it's great that Microsoft does regular patches and updates, except that if there weren't so many holes that are exploited to begin with ....
As for hype, well "they" all do it ; Apple, M$, the major Linux distros, all taut that they are the best, so there is always going to be hype. I think that the hype surrounding Linux is that it is a strong system. Not perfect, but a good system. It is even able to recover Windows items when Windows can't otherwise be recovered. It (Linux) has weaknesses, but I will take that with the rest, thank you.