Ubuntu for the win!
Nah seriously tho, Vista is great for common tasks, such as web browsing, music management, pictures, office apps, etc... Basically, if you're a teen-aged girl who only knows how to do the same 5 things on your computer, that should be fine.
But when you try to do anything hard-core, you WILL get into problems that need to be worked out.
Examples: My matrox real-time editing cards wasn't recognized by Premeire because vista blocked access to the hardware from software layers as a security issue. You can work this out with some tweaks, but I'm told it will never work quite the same until you go back to XP.
I'm also very involved in embedded development, specifically spending alot of my time on HTC phones and their firmware. I've had Vista lock directories on me many times when building firmwares and have to do all kinds of things to make my software talk to the com port properly.
Can you make Vista work properly? YES! But you have to jump through hoops and take many additional steps to do so. Steps you wouldn't have had to take with XP. So why is it worth bothering?
In fact, Microsoft KNOWS vista isn't as solid an offering as they had hoped, and despite the fact that they are pushing Vista down everyone's throats, they admit that business users (who need stability and support for legacy configurations) will prefer XP. That's why, for the first time in MS history that I know of, MS is actually secretly offering free downgrade rights to XP for Vista users.
http://news.cnet.com/The-XP-alternative-for-Vista-PCs/2100-1016_3-6209481.htmlThat's right, if you have Vista Ulimate or Business, you can put an XP CD in, and when it prompts for a reg code, you can
call MS and they will give you a reg number free of charge. They never gave away older versions for free before, and back in the windows ME days, they made you buy an additional license for 98 if ME was too buggy for you.
This should be proof enough that even MS admits Vista isn't ready for everyone.
To those who say XP was buggy at first too... it was never this bad. XP was actually one of the first solid OS's MS released that was decent from the start.
Vista is more like Windows ME all over again, which was a disaster. Here's to hoping Windows 7 gets it right.
If I didn't use applications that required a Windows environment, I'd be using Ubuntu exclusively... but that's a matter of preference. For now, XP is the only logical choice for me.