I’ve been using Vista long enough to know that I like having the richer GUI experience, but overall I’m unimpressed with compatibility and performance problems – and a general lack of drivers for systems that are older than a few years.  I agree with the advice that home users should order systems with XP installed.  You must have the latest hardware to have an acceptable experience, at least based on my experiences with Vista.  Hopefully by the time Service Pack 2 is released most of these problems will be addressed, but SP1 is still in Beta.  

I found this humorous video about Vista, and it speaks a certain level of truth on the subject: