I found out why the "Internet has been so slow" here lately.
Seems work took over my cable broadband account... which made it go from 10Mbps to 2Mbps
I had no idea the account had switched to them until I got a letter from InsightBB telling me the rate had gone from 2 to 4Mbps. Which sounded pretty crappy b/c I thought I had 10Mbps.
Thus explaining the "amazing" speed improvement with Vista, which must have been right about when the BB was bumped.
Sent an email to see if I can get work to bump be back up to the same speed I had before.
At least now I know I am not crazy and that it really WAS much slower than it had been before.