I was actually able to play NwN on this computer. With the widescreen LCD monitor and the much faster processor (and more video RAM to boot) it looks awesome, too. I can see everything and there's a ton of screen for the map display, dialog display, inventory, etc, etc.
It's only been a month since I last played NwN...I'm having trouble remembering what keys do what. But at last it works, so that's a major sticking point for me that's now been resolved.
Now there are only about 5 or 6 other things that I need to be able to do on this computer; once those needs/desires are satisfied, my hatred for Vista will go away.
I want a CD and DVD authoring program which is easier to use than the freeware one I downloaded. It's good, don't get me wrong, but I can't drag-and-drop files to the compilation; I have to use an "open file" dialog box. That's kind of clunky, and I don't like it. (Can't argue with the price, though.)
I'd like a good "Mahjong" program. The GameHouse Mahjong program I had on the P3 won't run under Vista, and that's a shame. I don't feel like paying $50-odd bucks for the privelege of upgrading to Vista Home Premium, so I can play the "premium" MS games. There's a Mahjong game in there, as I recall, but I doubt it's worth $50.
...I'm drawing a blank on the rest of it, though.
The point is, this is approximately what I have been hoping for: that my problems would, little by little, be addressed. Since MS is pushing for Vista to be the standard operating system now (to the point of charging for all XP support, dropping support for most previous versions of Windows, and such) I expect that the software industry is doing its best to patch or upgrade their software so it will work. MS kept Vista close to its chest, so developers had to wait almost until launch day to get their hands on it. This has kept malware to a minimum (so far) but it's also made usability testing problematic for developers.
Well, that's changing, slowly.
Maybe once I have a couple GB of RAM and get all my stuff working, I'll be happy with Vista. But for the moment, I only hate it less than yesterday; and that'll have to do, for now.