I also has used a laptop wit Vista, and the following are opinions:
Respect to accesibiliti, the Utilities Manager has changed to the Ease of Access Center. The Windows Narrator is beter than the Narrator integrated on Windows XP, because that in Windows Vista you can use the Sapi5 voices that you have installed. Also, if you have configured the regional options for a specific language and you don't have voices for this language, when you start Windows Narrator a message appears: "Please install a text to speech voice acording to the Windows language". The Sam voice has been deleted and the default voice is now Microsoft Ana. The Speech control panel show's the specific language of the voices, for example: Microsoft Ana - English (United States).

The new feature for search files, folders, programs, etc is accesible wit JAWS.
The folder's structures are complicated, therefore I recomend enable the clasic folders.
Windows Vista come's wit Internet Explorer 7 (I have downloaded this version and the version 8 on XP) and Windows Media Player 11 (onli accesible wit JAWS 10).
A very good feature called Volume Mixer can be used to set diferents volume levels for opened applications.
Another bad feature is the User Account Control (UAC) that I recomend deactivate. The problem is that if you deactivate this option, the security center display
an balloon text that is imposible deactivate separateli.
Some people says that some games don't work, but... I think that you can play correctly.
Windows Vista have much more new features, but it is my experience.
Ah!
The My Documents folder has been deleted. On her place, a folder wit the user name is on the desktop. In this folder are subfolders to organice your files: Music, Videos, Pictures, Downloads, Documents, etc.

You can activate the clasic folders wit the Folder options dialog, very similar to this dialog in Windows XP. I am shure about this, because currently I am tiping this post in Windows Vista wit Internet Explorer 7.
The problems are the standar Save As and Open dialogs that are very complicated to use in Windows Vista, heven if you has configured the clasic folders.

I remeber that wit Windows 98 the Add Or Remove Programs list is comon and I can move to a program pressing the firs leter.
In XP the accesibiliti of this dialog has been enhanced cinse JAWS 7.10, but I prefer this dialog in Windows 98, that is very accesible.
In vista, the dialog is called Programs And Features and have a new feature that open a contextt menu when you press the right mouse buton or the applications key.

I uknown this games, but I have discovered another enhance in Windows Vista, and is that if your computer is in a network, the computers wit Windows Vista detect the computer automatically and there is no need to configure the network.

As for Classic View, I don't think he is talking about being able to use or type a post in IE7. I think he was talking more about files and folders/menus. I was lead to believe that the classic view of the start menu and folders was taken out, but that might not be true. For the networking also, I don't see what was so hard  in XP. For me to network a computer, I plug in a LAN cable and I am done. If I want wireless, I hit enter on the network I want to join, type in a passowrd if needed, and *done*.

Here are a couple things you will notice. Vista is slower. Take two identical computers, same RAM, same processors and all that fun stuff, and XP is faster. If you aren't worried about startup speeds, and program loading speeds, you will be fine. Another thing is to get "full" advantage of Vista, you'll have to run JAWS 10 (I don't remember if you said you were or not). The streamers or banners or whatever those things are called seem to still give JAWS problems (from what I hear most blind people complaining about anyway). The one biggest thing against Vista is this. Seriously, do you want to trust a system that the manufacturer themself wouldn't upgrade to because of the problems/instabilities it comes pre-built with? If your computer is anything more than like 1.5-2 years old, and doesn't have at least 1.5 GB RAM, then trying to run it with JAWS is going to kill you. Vista's thing is that it is not compatible with a lot of hardware that wasn't built with only Vista in mind. If you were to buy a computer, preinstalled with Vista, then that computer has Vista compatible stuff. Many many many (like a high majority of users) that tried to install Vista on an XP machine had more issues than people seem to have with Beta systems, and almost everyone I know decided to "downgrade" back to XP. Microsoft actually came out at oen point to point out the hardware compatibility issues, so if it's an older machine, all I have to say is have fun.

On another note, I keep getting conflicting stories from people and websites. It's about 50/50 for what I hear. You have to keep support in mind.I kept hearing that Vista's support was going to be dropped because of all the problems it was having and they were going to extend XP's until Windows 7 is out, up and stable. If that isn't true though, unfortunately XP Home and XP Pro are supposed to be dropped this year sometime (XP Enterprise good until 2013 though).

I am not trying to start a war, and this is just me giving my opinion on Vista In my honest opinion, get a Mac and run XP in VmWare or Bootcamp for your things that can't be run in OSX.
Hope that helps a little.

The Network icon on Windows Vista is not present if you don't have configured the computer to use appears in networks. For this, you need to go to Control Panel, Sistem, Computer Name, Change Settings (the last is a link).
On this screen, similar to XP, you must to press the Change... buton. Enter the computer names, and select Workgroup on the radio butons. On the next edit box, tipe a name for the workgroup (this name must be the same for all machines, but Windows Vista detects the near machines automaticcally). When you press the OK buton, you must to restart the computer.

Respect to the performance compared to XP, Vista is a litle complicated the first time. The programs run slower compared to XP, but don't crashes wit need to reset the computer.