Now that I have been running Vista for over a week, here is an update to my Vista experience.  After turning on the Aero interface, Lightwave has been running pretty smoothly.  The GUI is nice and fast (thanks to the new hardware, not because of Vista) and the application has not crashed yet while working in it.  I have rendered out some test frames without issues and I even rendered out a scene using ScreamerNet with my new Vista computer acting as both the render controller (via Layout) and a render node at the same time.

Everything is not rosy with Vista, however.  Some applications just do not run on Vista.  I have already given up on a few applications and I installed them on my old system so I can continue to use them.

All in all, I wish my computer shipped with Windows XP rather than Vista.  The new flashy design of Vista does not give me any advantages in my general workflow, but the major hurdles that Vista introduces to programs and drivers has hindered my work.  I hope that Microsoft fixes the OS to improve the user experience.