IMHO go with Vista despite the issues, I should think new computers will have lesser problems, but if you are upgrading your existing computer from XP to Vista I won't recommend. For new computers, firstly it will be hard to get XP, secondly XP is going EOL, Vista is new and have a certain life span left.
I just upgraded my laptop about a month ago & had the same concern as you as I heard Vista sucks. Now I have Vista & had no problems as of yet.
There are still lots of older hardware which are Vista incompatible. And these hardware vendors have plan to provide any compatible drivers in near future So, Vista is still unusable to many!!
I have Vista and it works great. But there are sometimes bugs. There are always bugs with Windows products