For the bolded stop Trolling. No one has mentioned the reliabiolity of the consoles or compared the software lineup of each one. It's really annoying to see people deliberatly trying to start flaming on a peaceful thread. Don't try to drag the thread off topic.

For the rest. How does anything you said have to dow ith Jo12's post? All he said is that you can get Vista for cheap and that PC graphics of Alan Wake will be better than the 360 versions(which is a fact). He never mentioned whether getting a 360 is a great deal or not just the facts. Honestly don't quote posts  that have nothing to do with what your talking about and please try not make your posts sound like an advertisement.

Psssst!

Try "Hes great in the Warthog". This is the Microsoft forum, we don't need another LBP referrence now do we?!?!

I'd buy the 360, you can always sell it afterward the same thing can't be said for Vista.

In the sackboy that is.

<__<

>__>

*Runs*

You should get a 360. Also if you wait until the actual release of Alan Wake (mid 2009 I'm guessing) the 360 should have another price cut and Jasper 360's should be easily available.

Since launch? Ouch.

If you hadn't been using XP and were new to Windows, it probably wouldn't have been much of an issue, but for those who upgraded, the first issue was increased hardware (memory, CPU) requirements for what boiled down to slower performance.

Worse, was the initial lack of driver support, which meant many peripherals (printers, cameras, etc. ) simply wouldn't work with Vista until new drivers were released. So it was buy new peripherals or wait patiently. Not really acceptable.

SP1 fixed a lot of the speed/performance issues although Vista still requires more resources than XP. I find it completely usable and prefer the interface to XP, but knowing that everything would still run a bit faster with less overhead, is still a bit of a sore spot.

But facts are, XP support won't be around forever, and once essential development software and games start being coded only for Vista, it will be harder to hang on to XP.

So no, almost 2 years later, Vista does not really deserve the stigma that has always been attached to it. Unfortunately, the damage is already done, and despite the fixes/improvements, most people who have never used Vista still have a negative opinion of it.

If you want another gaming platform, it probably would be cheaper to just buy a 360.

Odds are, you will be doing some upgrading by then to play the game smoothly (resolution?), as AW may be one of those games that requires 512MB video cards. If not, you may run risk of having to play the game with settings lowered to the point that the 360 version might even play smoother, since all games are automatically optimized for its now somewhat limited hardware.

So if there are other 360 exclusive games you want, wouldn't be a bad idea to get one for cheap (Fable 2, Gears 2)

Only thing is you ARE going to upgrade your gaming PC eventually anyway, so don't see it as "saving" money there.

In retrospect, there are times when I feel I could have skipped the 360 completely as most of the best games on the platform are also for Windows, but there are still some platform exclusives that make me glad to have one just for the additional options. 

i say get a 360, plus u can get fallout 3 and its exclusive dlc,fable 2,sacred 2 ( next year),lost odyssey and tons of other great 360 games.

Can't go wrong either way. Most of what you hear about Vista is FUD and it hasn't helped that their perceptions are being skewed by the Apple attack ads. People are sheep and are being herded by the Cult of Mac.

If I were you, I would wait and just upgrade the OS when it's released. By that time, Windows 7 might be out on the market and the price of Vista lower than it currently is.

Oh, but if you want Fable II (GOTY in my opinion), get it now, now!!

Very true about Vista.

The worst thing is that most people who still have negative opinions of the OS are basing their opinions on hearsay (most of which is old and largely applied to the pre-SP1 update) and haven't actually used it. As long as your PC is relatively current, it's not a big deal to buy a couple gigs of RAM these days if you're short.

That being said, Mac OSX still thumps it soundly in terms of stability and security. It just works.

Sorry to say it now that there's an anti-Mac backlash and it's currently geek fashionable to bash Apple now that they've become mainstream, but... facts iz facts.

With my PC, I spend about as much time tweaking the settings, both hardware and OS (and BIOS when it comes to OC) as I do you know... actually USING my PC for productivity or play.

Once Windows 7 rolls out, most likely delayed, it may well be the same damn thing all over again with the driver support issue and additional resources required.