I really do think there is an alternative to Vista. And that is stick it out with XP for another year or two and then just go to Linux or something along that line. And the amount of software and even hardware that does not work with Vista is amazing. Businesses refuse to switch and that means any real business hardware has limited Vista support. For me an expensive Color Ricoh Printer is keeping me from switching. Official Ricoh support says it "might work". Didn't sound to sure either..
MS sucks and is expensive, 10,000 engineers and they cant make a new operating system? Please Google make an operating system with widespread hardware and software support. I cant believe I said that.