This is a question that I have asked myself, collegaues and clients now for a while. Next week Vista will be available on MSDN Subscriptions and TechNet and I guess that everyone will be there to download it - me too! I have been running the different betas and release candidates for a while and have waited long for this RTM.
I will not install it on my main work laptop, since I have to use Visual Studio.NET 2003 for a while more, and there are no support for Vista and VS.NET 2003. Vista will instead be installed on a Virtual PC so I can test it there. If I get the time I will do the opposite; XP on a Virtual PC with and Vista as host.
At home, where I use XP Media Center Edition, the upgrade to Vista Ultimate is a sure thing and I think this is where I will get the most out of Vista for now, and I have already pre-ordered it! I can’t wait for it to arrive in january.
Waiting until january will also result in a number of fixes for Vista and some more device drivers to function properly, there are still some of the drivers for my media center hardware that are in beta.
What amazes me are all those people downloading, illegal copies of, Vista from the different file sharing sites. $295 is not much for a system like this! Imagine all the time you will spend reinstalling and patching it since you will not recieve security updates and I bet that most of the cracks and patches contains virueses and trojans. Order it the right way and wait until january - it will be worth it!