The general angst against Vista really came from psuedo-tech geeks, who immediately hated the product before it even came out.

Working in an office that is doing a migration to Vista for over 2000 machines in this location alone, I can tell you that Vista is a damn fine OS.

All the problems with security, and speed of the machine, they can be resolved really easily. Turn off UAC, turn off the security features that bother you, and make sure you are, you know, using a machine from the last 3-4 years.

The only legit problem I have run into since starting the transition is that Vista handles network traffic, and likes to speak in a different protocol by default, to machines other then XP. We have some win2000 machines that we still run, because of legacy apps, and Vista doesnt like to talk back and forth to the win2000 machine without alot of work, at least through our network. Its also a bitch to try to dameware into Vista machines from XP.

Id still recommend giving it to SP1 to buy if you havent already, it wont hurt. But if you use common sense, read the actual requirements for the OS, and take a bit of time to learn about the OS, you will find its a decent enough version of Windows. It just likes to handhold alot at the beginning, which annoys some. But apparently it doesnt annoy them enough to take 3 minutes to search google on how to turn off the annoying features, which is all it takes on almost any problem.

The Vista machines we have running in our office, they are pratically XP with better features at the moment. You can turn Aero off if you want, and when the desktop isnt being displayed, the footprint for Aero is decreased, so that you arent using up as much time processing the UI parts that arent being shown. Aero also completely turns itself off while you are in a full screen application, unlike XP or before, so you are actually getting more power to game in Vista.

The big holdup at this moment, if I really had to pick one, is the software/hardware side. The OS itself is pretty damn nice, but vendors arent working well with MS on this, in getting Vista drivers out for older hardware, and making sure that they release patches for Vista for their software. Thats not MS's fault however, they have no control over that. But its still a major downside.