At first I hated Vista. Knowing how to use it was no biggie. It was slow as frozen syrup. I just put up with it.
Eventually, I started getting a message at startup telling me that the battery on the computer cannot be identified and that it would not be charged...press any button to continue (...and I couldn't find the "any" button"....ok....old joke...bad joke...) and logged on. Guess what? My battery DID charge as normal.
Okay, I was through pooting around, so I did a little research.
First, I made sure I had all the recent updates and service packs.
Vista is a memory hog. My Dell 1501 laptop only had 512MB of memory. It can hold up to 2Gig. Hmmmmmm. Also found that the error message at startup was itself an error, and there was a BIOS upgrade that coould clear it up.
After a few attempts at upgrading the BIOS, it worked. I also maxed out the RAM with the correct modules, and put my settings for best performance rather than best appearance....and I still like how it looks. I also went into msconfig and experimented with disabling specific startup programs. All this made a huge difference.
I actually enjoy my laptop now.