A recent post on my Livejournal was a link to a story on The Inquirer about someone moving to Linux because it's just less hassle than XP. (I may yet repeat that story here, so for now, I'll not link to it again.)
I find it interesting that one of the replies was, in essence, "I use XP because it Just Works and it's less hassle". Of course, everyone's mileage is going to vary, but the point of Charlie Demerijian's piece that I linked to was that sometimes these days, even when you know Windows really rather well and Linux not so much, Linux is, these days, the easier option.
Now, of course, those who have taken King Gates' shilling will rejoin that Vista will make it all better. Except, of course, that all the evidence is that Vista will actually make it worse.
Of course, I am, by many such folk, lots of whom are good friends of mine who've known me for years, seen as a ranting mouthpiece for the Linux Taleban. I am perceived to be a ranting zealot because I attack and criticize MS and promote alternatives.
So, on this one, I'm not saying anything. I'm just going to point at what some other folk are saying.
If you do home cinema, handle digital music, like high-performance PC gaming, or are in general a PC enthusiast, or then again, if you don't know or care and just want it to work, you should read the following links. The first is quite long, but it's entertainingly written and it's worth it.
A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Microsoft Vista is not an option
http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36653
(Charlie again, and while he *is* an extreme case, he makes good points and he really seriously knows his stuff.)
HD disk format wars are over (or, Piracy, the better choice(TM))
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36574
... and yes, Charlie again. Read the links from this, too. For the sake of balance, L'Inq published a counterblast to this too, but it basically says "Linux is too hard, people can't be bothered"; I wouldn't waste your time.
EDIT: Augh! Unbelievable! It doesn't understand HTML!
All right, sorry, folks, I'll remove the tags for now 'til I find how to drive this thing...