Vista for the common man??

I don't it is useful to a common man. It requires very strong configuration like 1GB Ram & Dual Core processor.

Not just the price of Vista, you also have to take into account the fact that your current PC may not be powerful enought to run it to it's potential. Remember min specs recommended are 1gig of RAM, installation alone is around 9gigs of HD space....better to wait a year or so till they've ironed out the bugs and by then a new/upgraded machine will be more viable.

I won't switch to Vista unless I'm obligated to do so, I think it has nothing specially different from the WinXP itself besides a new skin... so I think it's not worthed changing OS in this case.