It's really too much glitz that I don't need running on my computer. It doesn't run very well on this brand new computer that I got (that Vista was installed on to begin with.) There is no driver for my $300 printer for Vista, it's dumbed down, and makes my computer run hotter than the sun, and a very loud CPU. Playing games (like WoW and Fortress Forever) on it sucks because A: They don't play very well and B: I fear my computer may overheat. XP may be a good choice, but remember before the service packs came out, it was really buggy. My fave OS is Server 2003 which uses the XP kernel.
I don't like Vista either (All those damn allow/deny messages) but I'm stuck with it because of the stupid guarantee on my laptop good thing virtualbox exists
A good OS is backwards compatible with older programs, this is the primary reason I have issues with Vista. There are numerous applications that just don't work with Vista. As a software developer, I have an application that runs beautifully on XP, and Win2k, the same application is hit and miss with Vista, some machines it's fine, others it refuses to work. Compatibility is the single biggest reason the vast majority of corporates will not migrate their desktop platform to Vista. Maybe SP1 will fix some of these issues. The high hardware barrier is also an issue. As for the changes in UI and location of commonly accessed utilities, like the change from Win2K to XP, this is just a matter of getting used to it.