This is likelyy to ignite something, but may I suggest that you go to the Apple company store nearest you and look at a Mac? All the problems with Windows & Vista simply go away. Also, the Macs are especially well suited for photography, music and video.
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I can't believe I'm getting suckered into this, but here goes anyway.
1. Few of us PC users are completely unaware of Macs. There are plenty of us out there that have to run a PC for one reason or another. For example, I need to run ESRI GIS software, and there is simply no Mac equivalent. Sure, you can try the Windows emulation that's now available on the Mac, but years of experience with that sort of thing (on everything from Amigas to Suns) have taught me that it's not a reasonable choice for a very resource hungry application set, especially when you can buy a decent Windows PC for $700 or so, including a monitor that will work well for non-color critical applications.
2. Macs are easier to configure for color, and better at some other things as well. But they're expensive to buy, and expensive to maintain. One of my nieces has a Mac I-book with a DVD drive that failed after about six months. Apple replacement cost for the DVD was $389. See price for an entire PC above. I might add that I've owned four HP laptops, and the only failure I've ever had on any of them was a power supply, which cost me $100. I know that's all anecdotal, but it's my experience.
3. Given that it will never be reasonable for some of us to buy Macs, it makes sense to try and get the PCs to do what we need. If every photographer just gave up on PCs entirely, there would never be any incentive for Microsoft to improve Windows so that PCs would work well for photographers. Competition between Apple and Microsoft can only be a good thing for everybody.
4. The original poster wanted to know if Vista works for photographers. Some have stated their preferences and experiences with assorted versions of Windows. My answer is that Vista is fine, as long as you spend just a few minutes to set it up so that it doesn't inadvertently drop your monitor calibration. It's a very easy thing to do, and it would be a real shame for someone to buy a whole new kind of machine, and spend a stack of money on new software, because they were operating on an outdated or incomplete understanding of the way Vista works.
5. If we really want to get persnickety about trying radical new solutions, we can always start a thread about using Linux and GIMP. Now that GIMP is color aware, and given that you can obtain the O/S, GIMP, and plenty of other applications for free, that might be a solution for some as well. But the question was about Vista, and the answer is that Vista can work.