Long ago, Bill Gates promised the world a stable, transparent and capable system. Today, many years later, that promise is yet to be fulfilled.
For Windows Vista is still Windows. And you will not trust on it to run your critical tasks.
No matter which edition (Home or Ultimate) or version (x86 or x64) you will be exposed to the usual black box Windows has come to be. It took for me less than one day to get the old good Blue Screen of Death, running a simple minimal system bought specifically for Vista, no bizarre hardware, no lack of resources. And Vista was unable to shred the least light on what could have happened.
But if you want Vista to collapse for good, just keep pressed the Windows key plus E for a while, just to witness how a stream of 'My Computer' dialog boxes crowd the screen and finally throw the system to an irrecoverable halt.
Just a nice toy with its Aero cool desktop I wouldn't pay 10 dollars for.
If that is the best Microsoft can do, there's no reason for the Open Source community to worry about.
