Vista hasn't really bothered me all that much anymore. The few software issues that I've had such as Nero, Acid Pro, and Sound Forge have been resolved by using the "Software Compatibility Wizard" I run them in XP SP2 mode and I haven't had any more issues with them. The huge downside to Vista is that is requires better and faster hardware. I don't have issues because I have 2 gigs of Dual channel ram and a C2Duo E6420 with 4 megs of cache. I was running a P4 3.06 GHZ CPU and Vista was a bit rough. I still will prefer XP Pro SP2 to Vista though. One of the biggest issues I've really ever had with Vista was with the IPOD. For some reason it didn't recognize it as a mass storage device. It eventually worked by rebooting with the IPOD plugged in. It still gets finicky though.

To r0K: There will always be some "hidden" back door that the Gov't can get into man. It's not just vista ok? Depending on what ports you have open for certain applications they can be exploited in some way. As long as you aren't talking about something crazy like growing 150 plants you don't really have anything to worry about.

James