Hey Whiz, long time no see, hope all is well mate.
I too recently went out and got a new laptop, 17" screen, 160Gig hard drive 2GB Ram, bought it mainly for my photography and to surf, the usual stuff but it has got Vista on it. It is a pain in the arse.
I have a broken lappy here with XP on it and another one a few months old with Vista on it. I much prefer the XP one.
With Vista you have to update almost everything you put on it. Photoshop CS3ex, Lightroom, iTunes, nothing is straightforward to install, one product I have will not even install full-stop.
One thing that is really peeing me off is the Canon software 'Zoom-browser' will not pick up my 400D, I will have to call Canon support in the morning to get it sorted out, waste of time buying it otherwise as I say I want it for my photography stuff.
Vista is nice to look at but at the end of the day bloody annoying with all the drivers that have to be updated, if you can get past that and get the laptop settled and running ok then you should be alright with it in the long run.