To Splurge Or Not To Splurge

I'm considering upgrading my home PC to Vista but keep delaying the decision because the operating system has been getting so much bad publicity.
So is Windows Vista that horrible? This seems to be the 300 million dollar question nowadays.
It seems that there are as many opinions as there are experts. One says that one third of machines built for Vista have been downgraded to XP, another claims that Vista is actually being adopted at a much faster rate than XP was. Why is Microsoft getting so much flack over their flagship OS?

Here are four popular explanations:

1. The Vista Really Sucks Theory claims that Vista really sucks.
2. The We Hate Microsoft Theory says that Vista might be a fine OS, but Microsoft is viewed as such a corporate devil and anything they produce will be eyed with mistrust and get flack.
3. The Microsoft Asked For It Theory maintains that Microsoft invited comparison between Vista and XP when they claimed Vista would be the biggest release since the radically new Windows 95. The problem is, it just doesn’t live up to that claim.
4. The Premature Ejaculation Theory. In its rush to make Vista available for the post Christmas shopping crush, Microsoft chose to ignore the fact that key hardware manufacturers (Such as NVidia) had yet to produce working drivers for the platform. As a result PC vendors sold incapable “Vista Capable” machines to the Christmas crowd. (not nice)

The fire that Microsoft has been getting over Vista has the Redmond giant trying to pull multi-million dollar rabbits out of its hat in the form of the ”Mojave experiment” and Jerry Seinfeld. But I’m still left with the question to upgrade or not? In my case an upgrade would be a costly affair involving the purchase of a new PC and I just can't get that premature ejaculation theory out of my head. I guess this means I’ll be riding my Athlon, (cough) XP driven, (wheez) machine some more, at least until the jury declares Vista a straight shooter.