How about using a different OS ?
Windoze for gaming, something useful for the rest.
Can't comment on Vista. It's on my laptop, but only for purpose of reselling it sometime. Never used it, too many colors, ugly explorer.
I know this doesn't help much, but I've long given up thinking about the other OS, expect for running games. XP had become a decent flavour of windoze with SP2, Vista doesn't really exist, the W7 may be better, maybe not.