Despite me starting a thread about how much I hate Windows Vista (the issue turned out not to be with Vista, but with drivers and my hardware wrongly configured), I would say windows vista is a good solid operating system.

(I always think it's fashionable to be openly scornful of new microsoft operating systems, The same happened with XP when it came out, now people love it and hate Vista).

On my laptop I've been running Vista for months and it has been very stable. I downloaded Tweakvista which allows you to quickly turn off services and things like the Aero interface.

I'm sure there may be a way to run Vista in a dual boot arrangement - I guess it might be the smart way to try it out and revert back to XP if you don't like it.