Are Absolute Zero and a perfect vacuum the same thing?

I'd say no. Temperature is a property of matter. Without matter, there is no temperature, thus no absolute zero. Vacuum has no temperature.

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[layman's answer]Particles without movement/energy are at 0, but they are still particles and take up space.[/layman's answer]
(am I close?)

Thanks

Does that mean a vacuum cannot exist? Or only can't exist in the standard model?

In the first moments of the Big-BangThe temp was Infinite and so was the pressure. That was before any sort of matter was manefest.

Can you explain why you would think that?

A laugh has no temperature. That of course means that a
laugh cannot exist....

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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"The other planets?
Well, they just happen to be there, but the point of rockets is to explore them!"
-- Kai Yeves

Only in the sense that both are unachievable "ideals".

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Except that energy and mass are equivalent. E=mc^2 and all that.

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Point taken!

According to quantum theory, particles in the lowest states still have to have non-zero energy, and even absolute vacuum must have an associated non-zero energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmo_constant.html

You can treat that energy as a temperature, if you like. E = k_b * T

Absolute vacuum probably can't really be created, but if you consider a small enough volume of space, you can approximate it. Just pick a point where there is a very small chance of any particle existing at a particular time, and take the volume immediately around it. For all intents and purposes, that space is a total vacuum, for the moment.

Actually, you can't do that for vacuum, for what amount of volume do you choose? Vacuum energy would obviously be proportional to volume, so your T would be proportional to the volume chosen. It's not meaningful. The k_b*T formula applies for each particle (with a 3/2 factor, usually), so you can never get T from the energy contained in a volume unless you know how many particles are in that volume, on average at least. So even early in the Big Bang, there would be particles, they just would be blinking in and out of existence. And no theory of the Big Bang can say that T was ever infinite, that's completely outside any physics we can make sensible statements about. Just cleaning up the terminology a bit...

Without matter, which is a form of energy, the zero has no fixed point,
so can't be absolute. Complete vacuum cannot exist, spacetime would
be compromised, not to mention Albert turning in his grave.

Yes. But all matter had been crushed out of existence in the singularity of the black hole that had ruptured the previous universe's event horizon to produce the white jet (Big Bang) that produced our universe and probably a myriad of other globule universes. It may still be doing so. We can never know, because that information is beyond our event horizon.
Consider that one of natures primary acts is to recycle. So why not universes, energy, matter?

Oh! Yes it does. It's a load of hot air.