Heh just found this on the Intel website:

Do Intel SSDs need special driver support?
No. The standard drivers for any HDD will support Intel SSDs as drop-in components, such as those bundled with Windows*. However, for best performance, a driver that supports SATA Native Command Queuing (NCQ) is recommended, such as the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager (IMSM) driver from Intel.

NoteThe Windows Vista* driver has a bug which does not allow NCQ on Intel SSDs. For Vista*, only IMSM is recommended. An update will be provided when this issue has been resolved.

I think that pretty much cinches it.

No NCQ for Intel SSDs on Windows Vista (or 7). for the time being. Crosses fingers that by Oct 22nd there will be an autoupdate patch for this.

I think that this completely clears out my entire drop dead issue list for W7 on my current heavy test machine. I can mentally go back to looking forward to using it comepletly now Yay!