[MadMax]

Mav, your DRM points don't matter... look at what you linked us to; the text on the page says "when playing protected content" and that's exactly what Vista does; it encrypts and runs content through only a handful of devices if it is protected. MP3 files which I myself ripped from audio CDs or downloaded from somewhere are not protected because MP3 cannot use DRM. WMA files without DRM flags aren't protected either. DVDs usually aren't protected. "Protected media" in Vista's words usually is Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, the stuff that has the new protection algorithms on it. And when you play one of these, yes, Vista will encrypt them to prevent copying. I haven't found any downgrading of quality or had any problems playing a file I played on XP.
Vista doesn't encrypt all the files on my hard disk, and it also doesn't encrypt anything I download. For that I'd need to use BitLocker which I don't even have on Home Premium.

I switched to GNU/Linux some months ago, I've been online without any firewall, antivirus or ... how is it called?... ah, anti-spyware software, and I'm still running without any system crash or ads popping around, I'm using my desktop with true transparencies and it runs smoother than my windows xp, and I can run Half-Life thanks to Wine so all my essential needs are covered. Of course it has its downsides, getting my modem and video card to work wasn't easy, some apps have bugs, mp3 and divx doesn't work without some tweaking and still I can't get my sound card to work with multiple apps,

These problems are enough reason for many many users including me not to use Linux. Plus I bet you cannot play Half-Life 2 on it, which you so desired to play previously.

I don't know how extensively you actually tested Vista yourself (the DRM part obviously wasn't checked out by you), but let me tell you, Vista is getting more comfortable every day as I sort out the last minor glitches and I wouldn't want to go back to XP now. One thing I'm warning any upcoming Vista users of, because I experienced it myself: if you want to GAME on Vista, you NEED a fast processor, and it should be a dual-core! On XP, dual-core processors usually did more harm than good because XP didn't exactly know how to handle two cores, but Vista makes full use of multi-core CPUs and for intensive stuff like gaming, Vista practically requires lots of CPU resources. It might not seem that way when you look at your CPU meter, but I cannot play any DirectX 9 game fluently like I could on XP even after upgrading my mainboard and video card. Overclocking my CPU by 300 MHz already makes a difference (Athlon 64 3000+, from 1.8 GHz to 2.1 Ghz) and I can actually play everything, but at times when lots of objects come up onscreen, the games slow down. That's most probably related to DirectX 9 games being ran in a compatibility mode that actually wraps DX9 in DX10 (which is the native Vista DX). OpenGL games run fluent (tested with Prey).

I'm standing by my opinion; if you got the hardware, there's no reason not to enjoy the comfort of Vista; it's only a hassle if you need to upgrade first.