I don't use vista, however, I just bought my mom a laptop that has it because it was the OS. Meaning that I do use it, but it's not on my personal comp. I'm the techie in my family and therefore in charge of computer matinence and repairs. I can very easily say from personal expirience that vista is just a spiffed up version of the perfectly fine Xp OS, but it takes up the entire drive. If you run anything else but a word processor, expect some extremly slow running time. Also, if you are new at computers (my mom) then having all the frills means nothing if you don't know how to use it. Personally, I'm a mac freak.