Sorry. I don’t get “____ not responding” with Vista. I’ve been using it 14+ hours a day for two years.
About the only time I see this is when someone else's server is locked up.
I just retired from teaching in the Computer Technology department of a Big 10 university where there are thousands of PC's running in various labs. In most cases, users could care less about the OS than the specific software program they are running, and the variety is huge...from statistical packages (SAS, SPSS, Microstat, etc.) to mathematical modeling, to engineering software. Some MAC users stick with it because of a specific program they run on the MAC. I know relatively few who pick either machine purely because of the OS. They will even tolerate less-than-optimal OS performance as long as the program performs within reason.