I'm not entirely alone in the perception of Vista, as found at this link:
"Why all Vista users should upgrade to Windows XP..." and from this author as well:
Windows XP outshines Vista in benchmark tests .
Our winery is a small operation but we manage to put our around 90,000+ cases a year. There are 11 computers at the office, all networked, and running Windows XP Home except for 2 machines. We also have a UNIX server that has software that the owner/head winemaker wrote years ago for lab, vineyard, cellar calculations, and inventories. For the most part the UNIX system works as it should, but it is accessed with our Windows machines via a special software from J. River Soft are company called ICE.TCP This software runs as a 16 bit operation. Only 2 machines have 1 Mb memory (RAM), our owner, Doug, for doing the intense graphics design stuff on Adobe CS2 Illustrator, and our Event's manager, which also manipulates some of the stored/share Adobe Illustrator pictures. All the rest have 256mb. We run our little Excel '97 spreadsheets, and Word '97 along with internet usage and accessing the UNIX server. None of this requires the need for huge amounts of RAM, and things work.
Windows XP is so much better than the Windows 98 that we were using, and there has not been a real need, except on 2 machines, to upgrade to the Pro version over Home.
I think it all boils down to common sense. If you are doing nothing but accessing some old Excel, Word, etc files along with occasional web searches for products or repair items, what would be the overall benefit of an upgrade to Vista? We (meaning I) would have to build new machines with heavier build up of RAM just for starters, plus the cost of each OS for each computer. Boss like Office 97 and won't upgrade to even Office XP. Reason? Only he uses Excel for doing most spread sheet apps and is totally happy with it. The rest of the users are somewhat computer illiterate and barely function their Outlook Express effortlessly. Not ONE week goes by that I'm not called to at least 2 users stations because "Their computer is not working right" and to find out the problem actually was found between the computer monitor and the back of their chair.