I held off for years but...I’m getting my wife a laptop next month for her business. It will be a Vista machine since that is really all you can get really.
I will be loading Linux Ubuntu and Open Office on it.
Not true, I know of two good vendors that sell high quality laptops with XP, or Vista, or no OS at all. Freepmail me if you want the contact info (I don't like to post open messages that could be construed as shilling)
I recommend buying a new hard drive for it (so you can keep your preload) or at least use TrueImage or Ghost to save the preload image before you do anything.
I have grown to like Vista, and am glad that I got the chance to work with it before I had to nuke it. It’s really well thought out EXCEPT for the breaking of compatibility with some previous apps (which is why I had to get rid of it). There are some things in it that Apple could learn from, IMHO.
Why don't you just get her a MacBook Pro so she can have the best of both worlds?