I'm one of the people who don't use it that rip on it. However, I'm not totally unreasonable. My impression is that Vista is basically XP with the addition of

1. DirectX10
2. UAC
3. Aero

I don't want any of those features. since

1. I don't play games, but even if I did, I've seen more than one article critical of the performance, quality and cost - here's an example: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/09/0244212
2. You yourself turned off UAC, and
3. Aero is pretty, but I probably don't need video hardware that can run it for anything else (I spend almost all my time in emacs and a web browser, so I never waste money on a powerful video card) So the choice is either turn it off or spend a lot on unnecessary hardware

What it boils down to is I would turn off all the new features that I know of in Vista. If I'm going to do that, I might as well run XP (If I have to run windows that is). Since you're happy with vista, I'd be interested to know what new features you use. Thanks in advance.