vista is not going to be worth $200 or even $300 worth of an upgrade over XP or even deserve much anticipation from most home users, heres a nice list to make xp work and look just like vista which will cost only a fraction of the price and from what i can tell of the beta1, using these programs in xp is pretty similar to most of the features that should be in vista final version and then some.
ive toyed around with vista beta a bit and i'm not saying vista is bad in any way, i'm saying its not worth all that money for what you get,its not like switching from xp to mac or linux, its not revolutionary, it doesnt change how people can interact with thier pc's, plus much of its features can be found in xp if you download all the right programs.
1> Longhorn transformation pack 10.5 free - all the wallpapers,themes,icons..etc found in vista
2> Dreamrender 2.19 shareware- uses graphics cards instead of cpu, a replacement for avalon - create/download 3d animated wallpaper/use videos,liquid effects for wallpaper/transparency..etc
3> Desktop X shareware - another simliar replacement for the avalon feature- 3d icons, wierd start bars and menus, apple icons/animated icons lots of stuff dedicated to eyecandy
4> Google desktop/coppernick/findfiles-free - of course these search utilities are not virtual folders like how vista's search works, these find whats on your drive pretty fast anyway.
5> Truelaunch bar -shareware-you can create virtual folders,combine shortcuts in groups..etc, replaces old quicklaunch
6> WinFX - shareware- different effects for menus
7> Armor tools/pcsecure/securexp...etc - replacements for vista's user account protection (which will be quickly hacked and taken advantage of)