My old laptop has been a great trooper these last 6 years, but 6 years seems long enough for a laptop.  Technology has moved on.  It was working OK, but some operations were getting slow, and I really couldn't upgrade all of the software.  In addition, as I support people in the AARP TaxAide program who are now upgrading to Vista laptops, I needed to learn enough about it to support them.  So I took the plunge to a new laptop. 
I replaced my Compaq Presario 2800 with an HP Pavilion dv6000.  I got the newest, fastest processor I could get.  It's fairly loaded.  I could have gotten a less expensive, slower one, but I plan to use it for a long while, so I went to the top of the line.  I didn't get the largest disk offered, as Steve Gibson has talked about how the newer, larger disk drives also are less stable over time.  I also plan to get third party memory, as HP prices theirs just too high.  So the things that can't be changed are the fastest, and the things that can be changed were more reasonable.
I have gone through a lot of migrating and upgrading, and so far, I must say I like Vista.  The only item that I couldn't migrate was my Compaq iPaq PDA as its operating system is not supported under Vista.  I am using my Creative Zen MP3 player as my "pda" by using its calendar which is synced to Outlook.  I found the upgraded Zen software, and I also upgraded to Office 2007, and it all worked fine.
The other item with a bit of a problem is the printer.  I have an HP 1022 laserjet.  I found that I could share it on my old XP system and print from the Vista system to it, but if I tried to share it on the Vista system and print from the XP system, nothing happened.  The print file was shown as printing, but it didn't - until I rebooted the Vista system.  Then it happily printed.  I took the pragmatic approach, and left it attached to the XP system.  It's workable if a bit annoying.
I am liking Office 2007, including Outlook.  Minor changes, but an improvement in usability.  Migration of my mailbox took a little research on the Microsoft web site, but all of the information was there.  Word has a new look, and so far, it's been good.  I don't usually do much sophisticated formatting, and it has been fine.  The biggest difference is that when you begin to change something like the font size, it changes immediately so you can see what it will look like.  Nice.
I had occasion to try to migrate a Powerpoint presentation, a complex one with photos ande music, and we couldn't get it to migrate completely.  Since we had a time constraint, we bought a new video cable so we could use the old laptop for the presentation.  We just couldn't get the music and slide changing to behave on the new laptop as it had on the old one, an IBM laptop with an older version, probably 2002.
In summary, I am glad I went to Vista.  The new visual look is a bit to get used to and I don't think much of the softer colors as I can't always see the border around the thing that Microsoft is calling my attention to, but I imagine I can change that once I poke around a bit.  It wouldn't work as it is now for my wife, as her vision is not great.  Shame on Microsoft for rolling out a scheme that may be visually pleasing for younger people, but not usable for older or vision impaired people.