I doubt you would see 90% of the problems with Vista that I have seen. I have a vast array of weird little freeware utilities that do various things, and I’m finding that not all of them work 100% with Vista. And I’m always doing things that most users don’t do very often (like rearranging folders on my All Programs menu), which was causing User Account Control to get all up in my face. Those error-throwing videos were Korean and Japanese TV shows; most people aren’t downloading stuff like that. But I’m a power-user, and I’m finding some really annoying “gotchas” in a lot of nooks and crannies.

Still, this is not a great time to buy a new computer for one simple reason. Right now, we’re in the “find the bugs” phase with Vista. When the first service pack is released, I expect the OS to improve. However, that likely won’t happen until first-quarter 2008 at the earliest, so for simplicity’s sake, waiting ’till then to purchase new machines might be best. Installing service packs after the fact isn’t hard, but it’s not always a 100% error-free process.

Alternatively, you could always get a Mac! I’m actually being semi-serious — Macs are the absolute perfect platform for a user like yourself; someone who’s creative, into writing, blogging and photography, and not into app development, gaming, et al. I’d be pretty powerless to help you troubleshoot it, since I’m not familiar with them, but the good news is that you’d likely have very little to troubleshoot.

I’ll probably do the XP reinstall in the coming days, but the good thing is, it’s not even a true reinstall. I have a complete snapshot of my system as it was before I installed Vista, and I can restore it sector-by-sector so it’ll be exactly how it was before — and it should only take an hour or so.

Hope your XP re-install goes smoothly.