I use Vista, I like it. I will not return to XP.
I had a few apps that did not play well, I cut them loose after a reasonable amount of time after Vista's launch. Reasonable being 2 months. At work, we look forward, we do not buy apps that are not Vista-able, though most the systems are XP for today.

I play a few games, watch a little video, play LOTS of music. I haven't seen all these difficulties that others report. I'm sure they exist, but I don't see them here.

I had a FAR worse time moving to XP than I did moving to Vista. XP did not do well for me until almost SP2 when patches had taken care of most the oddities and stable drivers had appeared for my devices.

Which reminds me, there are still those who will not install SP2 because "All it does is add a lame firewall."

Get on down the road, take the time to get familiar with Vista, spring for new hardware if what you use is not supported in Vista. But get with the 21st century.

I like to support independent and small developers.
I like to support friendly, helpful developers.
I look for freeware, but I have two requirements.
 1- Can't look like it is being polished before the change to shareware.
 2- Has to be the equivalent or better of paid software.
I just replaced ReGet with Orbit Downloader. Quite happy with it and met my requirements.

It is one of the few that have unfortunately. Most free/open source apps just don't have the fit and finish, and way too many are the personal creation of the developer. They work how that person wanted to meet that person's needs. Nice if we both agree and have the same needs, but usually we don't. I'm also worried about 'abandonware'. Sourceforge is littered with dead projects. One you leave university and get married I guess it is harder to devote yourself to whiny leeches!

I look for, and ask for discounts if I am paying. I live in China and work as a teacher. Many of you likely have a large beer budget than I have salary. I don't bother looking at software that costs a month's pay. Not gonna buy at that price no matter what.

My sole exception? Various versions of Windows. Why? It has the tools, software, and hardware support I want. It broadens my scope when looking for an application or for hardware. About every three months for the past few years I have installed this or that flavor of linux and tried doing what I normally do, listen to music (Wavpack and FLAC), watch a few videos, play the occasional game, create lessons and lesson plans, edit and view pictures, create panoramas from images. I always end up restoring my Windows partition within a week. The apps aren't there and those I do find are limited in some way and/or do not have all the functions as their Windows competitors.

Have I ever done an 'extended' test of some software package? Yeah, sure. But I have always scraped up the money to buy whatever I keep on my system. If it is worth the disk space and I use it then I should pay for it. Just not always on the developers schedule. Is it right? No, it is expedient. Can I be 'a little pregnant'? Nope, guess not. But my rationale is not that Bill Gates has too much money or that the world somehow owes me . I simply have to save up to pay for anything that costs more than about US$30, and even then I have a wife to explain it to... Meantime, I'm selfish, I want to use the program while I wait to pay.

So, I think if you can buy a computer and you can pay for an internet connection, then you can somehow pay for the apps you use. Especially if the app comes from an individual or a small development house.