I bought 2 laptops last year. The first, for my wife, had Vista. The d@mn thing would lose track of her USB printer and the only way to get it back was to re-boot. What a pain-in-the-butt. Worse yet because my wife is not so computer-savvy. When the time came to get me a new laptop I order XP for it (just under the wire with Dell).
Later I purchased a licensed copy of XP Pro & installed it on my wife's computer. Night & Day, baby!
I’m just waiting for Windows release in June. Supposedly going to make right what they mucked up with Vista.