There goes Microsoft's monopoly. The only really big thing they had over Apple was that most programs and hardware was compatible with Windows. Vista? Not so much.

Well... I think I'll pass on Vista until it's actually worth it since right now, it isn't (for me at least).

naznatips said: L.C.E.C. said: That's one reason why I gave up being a PC gamer for the most part (not completely) after Halo 2 was Vista-only, along with Shadowrun, and I knew it would become a common trend. I also hate how I have to buy a PC or major overhaul/upgrade every 2-3 years for the price of 1/2 of a car, just to have "impressive" graphics... not to mention NVIDIA cards are always above the price of blood no matter what... EDIT: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OP??? The op was permabanned as an alt-account of Rock_on_2008. Rock_on's ban will be extended after his current one is up because of his alt account too. OT: Halo 2 and the other "vista only" games can be made to run in DX9 incredibly easily. In Halo 2 you literally just change the name of a file extension.

 lol, are you serious? That's so funny because I think it was stupid to try and force gamers to switch to Vista by having Halo 2 and Shadowrun as 'Vista Only' games. I have Gearbox's (crappy in my opinion) port of Halo on the PC and I may have given Halo 2 a chance, but not anymore. 

thekitchensink said: There goes Microsoft's monopoly. The only really big thing they had over Apple was that most programs and hardware was compatible with Windows. Vista? Not so much.

Microsoft's OS monopoly won't last forever, but Apple isn't going to kill them as long as they keep their OSes on their shitty computers. 

What will kill them most likely will be Google.  There is nothing stopping them from making an OS someday, and it's certainly not impossible to make an OS capable of running most to all Windows programs.

Yea I may not care much for Vista, but I definitely wouldn't want a Mac OS unless some massive changes happen to the OS industry.

IllegalPaladin said: naznatips said: L.C.E.C. said: That's one reason why I gave up being a PC gamer for the most part (not completely) after Halo 2 was Vista-only, along with Shadowrun, and I knew it would become a common trend. I also hate how I have to buy a PC or major overhaul/upgrade every 2-3 years for the price of 1/2 of a car, just to have "impressive" graphics... not to mention NVIDIA cards are always above the price of blood no matter what... EDIT: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OP??? The op was permabanned as an alt-account of Rock_on_2008. Rock_on's ban will be extended after his current one is up because of his alt account too. OT: Halo 2 and the other "vista only" games can be made to run in DX9 incredibly easily. In Halo 2 you literally just change the name of a file extension. lol, are you serious? That's so funny because I think it was stupid to try and force gamers to switch to Vista by having Halo 2 and Shadowrun as 'Vista Only' games. I have Gearbox's (crappy in my opinion) port of Halo on the PC and I may have given Halo 2 a chance, but not anymore.

Yep. It's really not hard to makes the Vista games run in DX9. Heck, you can run most DX9 games in DX8. It's a crack available for legally purchased copies of the game. The real reason not to buy Halo on PC is Microsoft's ridiculously awful Games for Windows Live service.

That's probably one of my biggest issues with Microsoft's direction with Vista. There is currently no reason to have to pay for that crap of stuff you should (and can already) get for free... They try to candy coat it, but it still boils down to you have to pay to get stuff you should be getting. 

Which is why I've been very pleased with Valve and Steam right now. New community features and achievements in the Orange Box? Hell yea!

IllegalPaladin said: That's probably one of my biggest issues with Microsoft's direction with Vista. There is currently no reason to have to pay for that crap of stuff you should (and can already) get for free... They try to candy coat it, but it still boils down to you have to pay to get stuff you should be getting. Which is why I've been very pleased with Valve and Steam right now. New community features and achievements in the Orange Box? Hell yea!

Yeah, Valve has done a great job making a fun and easy to use online community with Steam.  Games for Windows Live actually offers less features than Steam for $50 a year... so yeah, there are a lot of good reasons to dislike Microsoft in PC gaming.  

BenKenobi88 said: Nobody's saying gaming sucks on Vista. But compared to XP? Yeah, it kinda does. Framerates are a little better on XP, and yeah, only a little better...but why bother sacrificing any of your framerates? DX10? It's not that great. In a year or so I think we'll have better games to force us to use Vista, but right now there's really no reason. You can tweak games like Crysis to look EXACTLY like DX10 while using DX9. Not to mention compatibility with older games like Windows 95 compatible games. A lot of them simply won't work on Vista, and that's just stupid.

I remember these arguements used against XP (compared to 2000) back in the day. The overhead for Vista is a lot more, but in time that will work itself out and Vista will become the standard. Yeah it sucks for right now, but it sucks in the same way almost all new Microsoft OSes seem to suck. The only time I remember people rejoicing at the release of a new version of Windows was when 2000 came out. The switch from the 9X base to NT was just too good for people to deny at the time. Other than that most of the same arguements come out against the newest OS until computers start to actually be built with the new requirements in mind.

@Gnizmo

That's the whole thing, that there isn't much of an incentive to switch to Vista right now. There's promise with DX10, but so far nothing has been so great that has made me want to say 'I MUST have that'.

Trying to force it with Games For Windows Live and 'Vista Only' games isn't really helping my opinions on the matter either.