Did the reviewer try to install it on some laptop that came with Windows Vista originally? This review seems to try to be as negative as possible, which is weird. Leh gasp, the gnome desktop took up “a whole 1GB of ram”. Then install xfce or mate dude.

This feels like the reviewers expected Debian to create their own desktop environment between releases or something. The point of Debian has always been a stable experience, not to be flashy.

Sounds a bit like a faulty image. I had similar problems once with Ubuntu. Turned out the image was corrupted. Always check your md5sums, kids.