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If you do not want vista and you are buying a new machine from a manufacturer - you still may be able to get them to load XP on it. A co-worker of mine did not want a new dell laptop with vista and contacted them and while it took a bit of wrangling - he was able to get XP Pro on the laptop. The corporate (non-retail) market is still getting them with XP on them as a lot of companies have not made the switch over (and there really is no compelling business reason too) to vista. This OS switch is more driven by MS wanting to make some more money on a new OS and it does not seem to offer the business customer any advantage over the XP operating system. From reading TechRepulic and Windows forums postings - this is not the home-run that MS would like people to think it is.
I would consider giving my parents or wife a system with ubuntu or kubuntu linux distributions on them if I had to give them a new machine and the choice was to pay for a new OS to put on the system. The updating is easy, the install is easy, and for web surfing and email and an office productivity suite - well they are good and they are free. I like Windows, but there are other alternatives out there and they are pretty good. Another co-worker got a new dell desktop for just under $300 and he put Ubuntu on it and is extremely satisfied with it. If you are a gamer, or need to run certain software - then that may be a consideration to stick with Windows, but if not - the Ubuntu Linux distribution is not a bad alternative. If you are used to Windows - then try kubuntu - supposedly that is more similar to Windows - where a Ubuntu distribution is a little bit more like a Mac (still similar enough to Windows for a non-Mac guy like myself.
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