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Now I know I'll stick to Windows XP.

Very smart. Vista won't be needed for years yet, if ever.

Needs a gig of RAM just to idle, more to do anything serious. The medium to high-end versions are needed for all the eye-candy. The 3d-view is awkward. The UI is a ripoff of Mac OSX right down to the Gadgets feature and the new Search gadget.

The most compelling reason to upgrade is if you are a high-end gamer with $2000 or more invested in your hardware. Even then, the games and even the video cards aren't yet widely available and won't be for at least a year.

Vista looks to be the new Windows Millennium (previously the worst known version of Windows). Oh, and it's annoying and confusing for anyone except expert users, spending most of its time forcing you to click on this or that authorization for something it doesn't explain to you. Early studies are showing that it's so annoying that people just turn off all the security features to keep it from pestering them so much and end up far worse off for security than they were with XP. Oh, and Microsoft locked out the other antivirus companies so you can't use your reliable security programs with it even though it's very lame.

I won't even start in on all the DRM stuff that is designed to degrade your HD videos if you don't have HDMI/HDCP monitors and video cards. Lot of people out there have over 2 grand of first-rate equipment and buy the HD-DVD drive for another $200 and still can't even play it on their screen. It down-rez's it to DVD resolution.

I warned all my friends, families and customers to get a new machine with XP on it before Vista is the only choice. Or to just get a Mac which is what I finally did (Mac Pro). I haven't been this content with my computer in years. I use it to multi-boot, running Mac OSX, WinXP and Ubuntu Linux all simultaneously, all on top of the lovely Mac rock-solid BSD OS. Very stable, an amazing setup.

Vista is the Zune of operating systems.