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There's no real need to store your data on partitions that are exclusively accessible to Windows.

Simply make your data partitions ext2/3 and access them in Windows Vista with Explore2FS. A commenter in this recommendation of Explore2FS claims that it works fine in Vista Beta 1, so it's moderately safe to assume that it will work in subsequent iterations.

Also, there is an Ext2/3 filesystem driver for Windows which works in XP, and may or may not be ported to Vista as well (it may even work already, but I haven't seen any evidence for this).

Microsoft doesn't natively support it, but it gave Windows the extensibility to access other filesystems.

See http://www.fs-driver.org/

http://www.fs-driver.org/

Or maybe this one. It's the one I use. Works great in XP with SP2 and all other patches applied. The only thing is, if you want to resize the ext2/3 partition (using partition magic) you have to use the applet in the control panel to unmount it first.

Can't use exotic stuff like ext2/3 because it would need a driver to work with Windows (does such a driver even exist, and is it free or cheaper to license?)

Yes to both questions.

It works fairly well, too. The only snag I've seen so far is that ext2/ext3 partitions aren't automatically mounted/unmounted. For fixed storage, this is OK. For removable storage, though, if you disconnect a partition while it's still mounted, your computer will bluescreen.

(The ext2 IFS installs an app in the Control Panel for controlling what partitions get mounted where. Ideally, better integration with Windows would let you just fire up diskmgmt.msc and manage ext2/ext3 partitions the same way you handle FAT and NTFS partitions.)

I've used it on several computers at home and at work, and performance is acceptable. It's not as fast as NTFS, but the ext2 IFS under Windows is faster at reading ext3 filesystems under Windows than Captive NTFS is at reading NTFS partitions under Linux. (Linux's built-in NTFS support is much faster than Captive NTFS (and also works on more than just x86 Linux), but it's read-only for most purposes.) For a dual-boot system, I'd recommend shrinking your NTFS partitions to the minimum needed to hold Windows and its apps, and then use ext3 for the rest of your storage.

http://www.fs-driver.org/

1. ext2fsd which has support for Win64 (x64)
2. ext2ifs by John Newbigin (the one linked by parent). It says on the website "This version probably does not work under XP SP2".
3. ext2ifs by Stephan Schreiber. It's freeware but doesn't appear to be Open Source (so presumeably contains no GPL'd code). There are Windows XP screenshots on the site and it's x86 only.

Ooh, new version of Windows Media Player that probably still won't play oggs without me having to mess with codecs

And I bet it won't play Quicktime files either without having to mess with codecs! Or a bazillion other formats! Your "point" is completely and utterly invalid.

since Microsoft *still* doesn't have an ext3 filesystem driver, it's safe from the kiddies.

That's not MS's job, and there's been an ext2 IFS available for some time now. It's not their fault that you didn't install it.

When Windows Update works like emerge, I might consider using it.

It does. By default as of SP2. You don't have SP2 installed? Again -- not their fault. MS has actually tried harder to get SP2 rolled out than any previous service pack. If you don't have it installed it's completely your own fault.

There are certainly some problems with Windows, but so far you've only mentioned IO (Idiot Operator) errors.

http://www.fs-driver.org/
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm
http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/
http://freesourcecodes.tripod.com/ext2.htm
http://p-nand-q.com/e/reiserfs.html
http://www.wolfsheep.com/map/#RFSGUI
http://www.it.fht-esslingen.de/~zimmerma/software/ ltools.html

The above links were all gathered from http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm I've not tried any of them, but this one looks the most polished. YMMV, knock yourself out, etc.

http://www.fs-driver.org/
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm
http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/
http://freesourcecodes.tripod.com/ext2.htm
http://p-nand-q.com/e/reiserfs.html
http://www.wolfsheep.com/map/#RFSGUI
http://www.it.fht-esslingen.de/~zimmerma/software/ ltools.html

The above links were all gathered from http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm I've not tried any of them, but this one looks the most polished. YMMV, knock yourself out, etc.

Ext2IFS reads and writes to ext2 drives in windows, and ext3 is backwards compatible, so it writes to those too. It's worked fairly well for me.

It provides Windows NT4.0/2000/XP with full access to Linux Ext2 volumes (read access and write access). This may be useful if you have installed both Windows and Linux as a dual boot environment on your computer.
The "Ext2 Installable File System for Windows" software is freeware. It installs a pure kernel mode file system driver Ext2fs.sys, which actually extends the Windows NT/2000/XP operating system to include the Ext2 file system. Since it is executed on the same software layer at the Windows NT operating system core like all of the native file system drivers of Windows (for instance NTFS, FASTFAT, or CDFS for Joliet/ISO CD-ROMs), all applications can access directly to Ext2 volumes. Ext2 volumes get drive letters (for instance G:). Files, and directories of an Ext2 volume appear in file dialogs of all applications. There is no need to copy files from or to Ext2 volumes in order to work with them.

Do not put Windows Messenger in the system tray by default,

Windows already "natively" supports alternative file systems via IFS. It's just that someone needs to write a file system driver for whatever file system is desired.
There is a ext2 IFS driver available at http://www.fs-driver.org/ There are other drivers out as well, some not as complete as others.
Being that MS provides IFS and a development kit, I would think it should up to the filesystem developers to provide the driver to Windows.