I think it is fair to say that they have succeeded.

Installation is very similar to Slackware, that is to say completely text based.  While I am not a particular fan of text based installers, this version is reasonably easy and explained well enough to make the user not feel like they are about to do something awfully.  The installation went fairly quick and painlessly, giving me the option to create and chose my partitions, set up root and users, and off it goes.  On the Laptop, it took just a bit over 20 minutes from start to reboot, not bad for the old boy.

Boot is surprisingly quick, in particular on the laptop (a Pentum 3 500 mhz).  I have been tempted to try it on my main computer to see how quickly it could go.  It is easily the fastest load time I have seen on my laptop, no questions asked!  The login screen is a new one to me, it is likely a highly modified xdm login, that has everything including dancing penguins around the screen! (I have since identified the login as Quingy) There are several window managers to chose from, each with variations, Xfce, Ice, Fluxbox are all here, each with various options including having desktop loaded using Rox filer.  It provides a good deal of choice and ease of use while providing the smallest foot print and keeping the system requirements low.  Configuration is handled via a home grown "GUI" called VASM.  VASM is short for "Vector Administrative and Services Menu." The long and the short of it is that VASM is a very thinly disguised text based code set.  It uses simple phrases to set off other text based scripts that walk you through setting up basics like networking, hardware setup, display settings, well, pretty much everything.  It works quite well, but, it is not the most intuitive tool I have encountered. None the less, I was able to set up my wifi card with only a bit of tinkering which is pretty good, as I have encountered a few distros that really did not want to play with my wifi card despite it having native Linux drivers.  VASM really comes down to a lot of what this distro is about, small, efficient and fast.  And yes, it works fine, you just need to understand and think a bit more about it than you do with something like Mandriva's Control Center.  
Screenshots

Like most lighter weight distros, Vector does with smaller more basic programs what the big boys do with 20 other programs.  Text editors for example, Vector has several, but the main GUI based one is Beaver.  Beaver is much lighter and quicker than many of the other GUI based editors, but is equally as powerful.  In addition there is Firefox, GAIM, The GIMP, Abiword, MPlayer, XMMS, XOrg all sitting on top of a 2.6.11.7 kernel.

The standard version is missing a lot of what makes Linux go slow, namely the larger window managers and their respective tools.  In turn, this can mean that you may have to make due with a different version of a tool than you are used to using, like Beaver instead of KATE or Emacs.  While this may be a minor transition for many, Beaver is not KATE and Abiword is not OpenOffice, neither is any less powerful, just different.

Speed Kills they used to say, but in this case I'll make an exception.  Vector is just plain fast! On the laptop, everything reacts quickly efficiently just like I would hope for.  I am truly very impressed with Vector's ability to rejuvenate this old piece of history.  Most everything works quite well and is solid reliable.  There are two exceptions in my experience, Gslapt and Firefox integration.  Gslapt is a GUI based version of Slapt-get, which seems to work fairly well.  The problem?  there are 3 that I encountered, first, I don't see Gslapt working through dependencies very well.  In several cases it ether scolded me for trying to install something without another Dependant file, or just went ahead and installed it without so much as a note that the program may not work without ....  Secondly, Gslapt does not like to work for the user, only for the Root when logged in as root.  There is an ongoing discussion as to how to fix this on the message boards, none of which made any difference to my install. Thirdly, Gslapt offers a list of your repository sites, and the option to add several, however, if you go and review the file that this list is based on there are easily 30 different sites listed, but commented out so they are not used, Gslapt does not recognize this and does not offer any of them to you despite being available.  I pretty much did not use Gslapt as I would need to log out of the user, and into root to access it, if you know what packages you are after or are just looking for updates, the slapt-get command line interface is more than sufficient.
Ok, Firefox integration?  I couldn't think of a better way to put it.  It comes down to this; under every other distro I have used Firefox will offer to install plugins as you encounter them, such as Flash.  The offer is made here, but the install fails.  I was able to manually install Flash, but that was it.  Part of the beauty of Firefox is it's ability to find and install what you are missing seamlessly, this made it just plain ugly.

So, where does this leave me and my laptop?  Well right now, nowhere actually, the hard drive died last weekend and I have not yet obtained a replacement; it's hardly worth buying a new drive for 60 bucks when that's more than I paid for the entire computer.  
I guess the question is am I going to put Vector back on the laptop when I get a different drive?  Honestly I don't know.  I am very impressed with Vector, it has speed, stability and a great deal of quality applications, I will have to think about it.....