Yeah, vista sucks. REALLY HARD. But then, that's microsoft for you. I have never strayed from my Mac upbringing and I'm glad.
That much is obvious.
Ok, sorry, to revise my previous statement:
I've never bought any microsoft product, but because of the fact that my college uses PCs and my lady has a laptop that runs Vista (that I was forced to use because my mac was AWOL) I have had a fair amount of experience of Microsoft failing over and over.
/derail
There's your problem.
Colleges don't give much crap to the performance value of things, unless it's minimum requirement (to fit within a budget, and to minimize student complaints), plus those things are absolutely riddled with security stuff anyhow, which drain resources like Shaggy and Scooby-Doo through a buffet; and second, laptops don't run well with Vista. I didn't think ahead when I got one for somebody, and I still get calls on how to fix it.
I'll agree, Vista has it's levels of suck, but that's if you have inadequate power and know-how behind it, otherwise, with a bit of tweaking; you've got one hell of a machine. Lifehacker helps.
Example: I can run a 6x6-8x8 DF map (Bloodfist (my current map) is 8x8 BTW) and I have yet a hiccup. Even some of my more potent maps on such sizes have yet to go screwy.
And before accusations are tossed, I have used a mac (At the time, OSX Tiger) for a whole year or so, due to the fact my past PC was crap, and I needed something compatible through college. But I was fortunately able to afford the monster I use nowadays before the economy went down the tubes.
You can't beat a desktop. They're plenty portable, provided you know how to transport it without damage, and not use as many trinkets (IE- Webcams, Surround Sound, etc.). Those tend to drain resources as well. And if you habitually optimize your computer once in awhile, and not have so many extensions on at the same time or on startup, it should run like a dream.