Eh. Vista's alright. It hasn't given me any serious problems, and two of the three current issues I wish to fix are more than likely user-attributed. I even got used to being prompted on whether to allow this or that whenever I try to start a variety of programs. I'd say that, from my own experience, what makes Vista inferior to XP is that it's bogged down by a lot of superficial features (which I either turned off or changed to something standard or classic). I couldn't tell you exactly how, now that it's been a couple of years since I last did anything with XP (and thus my memory of it is quite faded), but Vista doesn't seem as easy to figure out or quite as efficient in some ways. But all I'm basing that on is a feeling, really.
Of course, I may just be one of those rare individuals who are lucky enough to have never encountered any serious computer problems. Lord knows how many different things happen to other people and their computers that -- despite being very frequent and/or common -- never happen to me. Which I'm sure would enrage every person who's ever shelled out the cash for the best protection they could buy, and who still ended up with some misfortune or another. Especially considering that most of the protection I've used in the past five or so years has been very basic and mostly dependent on the actions I had to take in order to prevent doing something or going somewhere that might compromise my weak defenses. My paranoia helped me, of course. XD;;