After months of inexplicable shutdowns, program crashes and general frustration, I took my laptop to the shop where I bought it and had it the whole thing blown away and "dowgraded" to XP. Didn't have to buy an XP license either, apparently MS allows you to downgrade, their word, not mine!

Brought it home, reinstalled all my software, copied all my files from my external HD and haven't had a problem since.

I will admit though that I liked Vista's look and feel, but the problems I experienced were just too much!