Yes. Vista is fine. Your system needs to be a little beefier to run it over XP, but it's been just fine. I find the worst company that sells products with Vista is Acer. Now, normally, they are an okay company, but their budget line comes with Vista and has bare minimum for specs and it runs really slow. This is the reason a lot of people hated Vista; because companies would sell it with bare-minimum specs and it would run like Geo Metro.
Is vista going to disappear and become a distant memory?
Yes it is. Windows 7 will be out soon (like October I think) and Vista will be gone.
I have to strongly disagree. It absolutely will not. It won't become a distant memory for some time.
However, you'll be able to get a deal on most sites that will come with a free upgrade to W7 when it comes out.
This is true. I just ordered a Sony Vaio laptop (Vista Home Premium), and when Windows 7 releases, I'll get a free upgrade. However, I highly doubt you'll get this deal if you purchase a laptop/desktop from Newegg. Someone can certainly prove me wrong on this, but from what I have seen, it's just companies (Dell, HP, Sony, etc.) offering this from when you order from THEM. Bigger chains might offer the upgrade for free though; such as BestBuy (yucky!) and the like.
My apologies for asking this at this point(a bit out of touch) but has vista been a complete bust?
Complete and total from what I understand.
No, again, I disagree. I've there were problems pre-SP1, but after, there haven't been too many problems. I've been running it for over a year and have yet to have a major problem. Sure, there are some annoying things you have to disable (and they'll be back in Windows 7; such as UAC), but I like Vista over XP. I actually find it more user friendly, no matter what anyone else says. You had to do a lot of things manually in XP that you don't have to do in Vista.
I got my Acer Aspire One Mini Netbook for $278 at WalMart. 10.1" screen. Size of my hand from front to back.
I'd recommend a laptop with a full size keyboard for the kid(s) to get used to. That's what they'll be using in the "real world". Just my 2 cents on that.