So I got it and it's on a DVD.
I wanted to keep XP incase it didn't work out so I got this systemrestoreCD thing...basically a Linux LiveCD distro used for the sole purpose of resizing/renaming/doing whatever you want with partitions. I made a 30GB partition, installed Vista on it and...goddamn...there's a lot of bad press about it but, you know what, with my specs, which aren't even the best...there is NO drop in performance in games, I played TF2 at the same settings as on XP (1280x1024, all high, 4xAA/8xAF), and if anything, there was actually a gain in performance, even with Aero turned on and all AIDS settings on default. Applications load faster and boot time is not noticeably longer.
It's really not that bad of an operating system, if you can run XP flawlessly then you can probably do the same with Vista, I know I did and actually gained a little performance.
tl;dr:
<3 Linux and Vista isn't that bad.
This morning after a fresh install:
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