I've been running Bearshare on a Vista notebook for about 4 months now (and on a Vista desktop - Vista 64-bit, no less, but that was a pain to get working).

Vista is notorious about making sharing difficult, so make sure sharing is turned on for your BS file folder. As for not connecting, there is likely still a firewall involved. Check your status indicators in BS (top right of the window) and it should tell you if there is a tcp or udp firewall running. I had to totally disable the stock Vista firewall to get BS running - it kept ignoring exceptions.

Oh yeah - my notebook also came with Norton Internet Security installed, and it had a firewall of its' own. Nothing that "uninstall" didn't fix.

Nick