Quote: "Vista can't see the shares on the XP machine"
Sorry but that should not happen, infact it is easier for you to setup sharing. Vista can read shared files and folders perfectly from xp(and vista) I have had no problems at all, didn't have to use any work arounds, just had to select the folder and allow the sharing. Of course you have to allow access through the firewall too, but you have to do that with everything if you have a good one...
Using XP to XP I've had NOTHING but trouble, every time I try to connect to another xp machine like my laptop I get "sorry you don't have permission to access this computer" and it takes an hour of messing around to get the thing to work, then after I reset the computer I gotta go through the entire process AGAIN. With Vista it took 2 seconds to set it up and it keeps on working.
Quote: "massive amounts of ram it requires to run"
£30 for 2gb of DDR 2 8000 ram. 256mb is a bit crap, I wouldn't even install XP on it. Maybe linux or win2000 or less.
Vista uses all the ram available since it thinks free memory is a waste so it loads programs you use a lot of so it takes less time to load. You can turn if off if you hate it so much
There should be a way to turn off DRM. I don't think I have it because I'm on Business ed. If you have over 256mb of memory it should work as smoothly as XP.
Quote: "Every computer Dell ships has drivers with problems"
Ahhh so there's the problem! I thought all these problems sounded like dell issues. Sorry you're a bit screwed then.
Quote: "Plus, there are other issues and plenty of unstable drivers"
Thats more to do with the developers of the drivers than Vista, however I have found XP drivers to work better than the Vista drivers some developers release. Try it, its kinda funny
I have XP drivers installed for my wireless pen drive as the vista one crashed too much O.o
Quote: "I started on windows 3.1"
3.1 is AWESOME. I kinda miss it, even though all I did with it is play duke nukem3d and doom
Quote: "linux/unix: check out the WINE project"
WINE doesn't work for a lot of things unfortunately, including Darkbasic Pro
Quote: "Other operating systems are more stable then windows, and some of those are cheaper. Because of the complaints I hear from the vista user I live with (and some of the stupid problems I've managed to fix)"
I think your major problem is with Dell and not Vista, if you do have a dell computer. My brother bought a dell with vista and has pretty much the same problems you've been having. We threw it back in dell's face and bought a PC that was actually worth our time in the end