The fact they are telling you they need Vista, tells me they are...

The fact they are telling you they need Vista, tells me they are pulling your leg lol. I would ask them for a good reason why they need Vista, as I for one can not think of any reason someone using XP would 'need' Vista at all. I am slowly migrating, have XP as primary OS, and Vista Ultimate as a play thing. Currently you will have a headache with many apps and compatibility, not to mention it is best practice to usually not migrate to new software prior to a decent period of testing in real world (say 12 months) for developers to iron out bugs and security flaws. If your machines are business critical, stay away until as you say next year you upgrade your systems, where by then Vista will be much more widely supported and fine tuned. I am not a Vista hater, or a microsoft hater, I have an open mind, use OSX and Linux as well, all having good and bad points. But Vista is too much of a virgin right now.

Cheers Greg