I like Beagle's suggestion.
I'm the other half that ATCbabe speaks about and yes I have been thinking about buying Vista whilst in America.
Okay so the upgrade version should be okay, I just have to ensure XP is already installed or I have the disk to hand for Vista to validate it as "upgrade" acceptable. Should cost just under £80 instead of the £150-£160 it costs over here.
I don't "need" Vista but as a hobby coder (in Visual Studio C# .NET environment) I require a copy of Vista to start implementing Vista visual effects into my code.
I know of problems with Vista but have found that all of my hardware has Vista drivers including my GFX card (ATI Radeon X600 256Mb) but this will also be upgraded soon, probably to a nice shiny Direct X 10 card, again hopefully with the new generation ATI Radeon chipset.
I do use FSX now and again (once in a blue moon it seems!) and as this has been designed with Vista in mind, er I actually mean DirectX 10, once I have the GFX card this should show FXX to its full glory. I seem to recall that Direct X 10 is only going to be available to Vista platforms.
Thanks again everyone (and kisses to ATCbabe for asking the question).