Windows Vista and CD-RWs

[Bender]

I don't know if the problem is my used laptop I bought, windows vista, or I'm re ed.

On my XP machine, I can stick in a CD-RW, then it asks if I want to erase it (if it has stuff on it) or drag and drop files to it and burn it. It all works very nicely and easily.

On my new (used) laptop, which has vista home premium, when I stick in a CD-RW with files on it, and then I try to open it to view files, it always prompts me to "make it ready", ie "format it". I say ok, format it and make it ready... (I want to erase it anyway and put different stuff on it). OK, so then it shows "about 15 secs remaining...
25 minutes later it is done.
Then I drag and drop a small folder to it (an mp3 album), it says "copying to CD... about 15 minutes remaining. WTF??! I want to put 6 mp3 folders on the CD, and I'm not waiting 1.5 hours for it. So I cancel the folder copy after 2 minutes, then take the CD-RW over to my XP machine.

XP says "windows can't read this CD format". So I say "erase this CD", takes just 15 secs or so. Then I drag and drop the 6 folders to the CD, which took someting like 20 seconds. Then I said burn it, which took maybe 20 minutes.

What the ing is wrong with vista, or what I am doing wrong? I can't believe how MS royally ed up XP and called it vista. No wonder everybody I know hates vista.
I can't believe a CD formated on Vista is unreadable on XP, WTF?!! and what's all this "formatting" bull ?! XP doesn't make me wait almost 30 min. every time I stick in an RW. What year is this, 1999?

[PM5K]

Do you have the latest service pack?

[Bender]

windows vista pretty much updates itself every damn day on my laptop. I just looked, and it shows SP 1.

Is this the way vista is, or is it a CD drive problem, or a user problem...