Much to my chagrin, I'm being forced to upgrade to Vista in order to keep up with my work. I'm competing with well maintained Macs and program specific DSP, so I need the absolute best system at home in order to allow me to create consistent content for my class work as well as doing mixing at home.

Because I just simply do not have the stamina to do the exhaustive amount of research I would need to do to get simple answers, I'll ask my Vista questions here and hope that, as per usual, I get some very helpful and "in english" answers. Please tell me all you know about the following aspects of Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit:

Process management
User Permissions and other neat things you can change on a per-user basis
Audio drivers
Gadgets (more importantly, for the per-user account thing, would it be possible to shut them off for one user but not for another)

Also, please list any redeeming features of Windows Vista either promised or implemented since I haven't heard too many.

Merci, as always.