Phantom, as for your Wacom not working, you simply have some other problem somewhere, maybe a driver conflict. But I can tell you, the Wacom Intuos 3 definitely does work in Vista. They just came out with the 6.08 drivers 11 days ago. Maybe try the 6.05 drivers?
But since you're having problems, and don't want to dick with it, you should go back to XP. I wouldn't recommend Win 98 though. Win 2000 is more stable.