But Vista won't run some of the USEFUL programs out there at all.
Like Visual Basic 5 or 6, and the old Windows HELP program.

It just looks like a scheme to force everyone to buy new copies of programs which they already have and are perfectly adequate.

Programs I make under XP (or Win98) still run in Vista, though.

History Lesson:
I used to work for a mainframe manufacturer, ICL. They decided that their NEW RANGE of hardware (in the 1970's) would not be compatible with their previous hardware:

The result? Many existing customers said that if we are going to have to convert all our software to a new and untested system, we might as well convert it to the tried and proven IBM mainframe instead.

Result: ICL were eventually taken over by Fujitsu and ceased to exist.
Sad, because their new operating system was far superior to IBM's (1960's based)OS.