The only advantage is that it is free, comes with Windows. Other than that it is a poor program. Open Office 3 from Sun Microsystems has a fair paint program called Draw and is free for download with...
The answer depends upon what you wish Vista to be compared to. I'll assume Windows XP, in which case the answer's "not a great deal". There's a major overhaul of the graphical interface. Media Center...
As with most software packages, later versions make improvements on older versions to take into account advances in new hardware & software development.