i mean what can you expect.... if you got crappy/shitty ass specs...then of course vista is gonna run crappy/shitty...
its like buying a cadillac but putting 87 gas in it and wondering why its not running to its fullest potential... or making bad ass noise...
first and foremost...forget buying vista ultimate on a system that cant even run it (no the manufacturers aint gon worry about it being fast enough...its a sales' scheme....)
second...this shit is just like our favorite hobby, go cheap and you will [grow] cheap
i've got vista on all my systems, and all my family's system. hell i even run vista ultimate on my media center... but guess what? i dont expect a p4 processor with only 512megs of ram to run flawlessly either
all my systems with vista ultimate has AT LEAST 1.5gigs of ram
and for future reference, windows ME and windows 2k were the most unstable systems EVER
sooner or later you will have to switch to vista, unless you plan on going the unix or mac route...cuz microsoft is dropping support of earlier OS's real fast