I've just started Fallout New Vegas, and I've been taking all the precautions I can in the hope of avoiding bugs:

-Clear the Xbox 360 cache
-Turn all AUTOSAVES OFF
-ONLY DO MANUAL SAVES
-DON′T OVERWRITE AN EXISTING SAVE GAME
-NEVER QUICKSAVE
-NEVER QUICKLOAD
-WHEN LOADING A SAVEGAME, RETURN TO MAIN SCREEN FIRST
-HOLD LB. RB, X WHEN U BOOT UP THE GAME (this clears the game cache, which can get fragmented after a time, which results in longer loading times and can cause script issues)
-Keep USB backups of gamesaves

So far I'm about three hours in, and everything seems to be going perfectly. There hasn't been a single bug, large or small. So has there been a patch which has helped to fix some of them or something? Or might the precautions be helping? Or maybe am I just one of the lucky ones? Either way, I was very hesitant to actually start playing this game, but now I'm allowing myself to get excited about playing a new Fallout game.

Well, i just finished my latest playtrough few days ago. Did the House questline and it took about 60 hours. Only problems i encountered were the lag issues and general choppiness here and there plus 3 freezes. Nothing game breaking. Didnt use hardcoe mode. No auto saving. No fast travelling. Dont know why but i feel lot′s of fast travelling might give good chances to mess up something in your game.

So yeah, was enjoyable playtrough generally. Hope they iron out the lagginess on the upcoming patch. Thats been my main problem with the game after the two patches allready out.

Sounds good. I'm not sure I could completely avoid fast-travelling though, even with the map being smaller.