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I don't see having to "get rid of" vista as that big a deal. It's probably not that hard to install whatever operating system you'd rather have. If you were objecting to paying for it, that might get you a little more sympathy here.

Lenovo offers some[0] Thinkpad models with SuSE preloaded. Apples all come with OS X. Those are probably the most popular laptops among news.yc members. Dell offers Ubuntu on certain home models and Redhat on certain business models. I think a few other manufacturers will sell you a laptop with something other than Windows. It's also still possible to find XP on a machine or two.

[0] Unfortunately, it's only a few specific models.

I beta tested MS Office 2007. I actually liked it. The new UIs for Word and Excel are much better than the old UIs. My XP machine is dead though, so I now use my Mac for everything.

Just buy from somewhere that is know to offer a refund on the Windows tax easily, provides their systems with no OS preloaded or something like the Dell Ubuntu offerings.