I actually wouldn't complain about Vista nowadays all that much, especially if you have plenty of RAM on the system. After SP1 it's gotten quite alright. I don't notice any performance differences and to be honest my laptop's more stable nowadays than my XP system was... buuuut that's another discussion, no?
Vista didn't bother me until I tried to instal SH3 . 64 bit explorer is fun, but then there's the driver issue!