Yea, all the ports/firewall were right but UltimateVNC did not play well with Vista even though it was supposed to, beyond not letting me conenct. Ended up causing a BSOD/restart loop. I had to go into safemode and remove the program manually.
I ended up biting the bullet and downloading the pay verison of RealVNC that works with Vista. I got a 30 day free trial and it is only $30 after that (inside my company's Petty Cash reimbursement window
).
All is well now - I can take my sleek new Macbook on vacation instead of my big-ass company Dell!