Not going to happen 'bro... Why? Because if you're a large PC manufacturer, you're pretty much forced to load an M$ OS and that will be Vista. Yes, I know that Dell still offers XP on a small select portion of their line, and they also offer LINUX on a an even smaller number of units.. But if you're buying a new box, it'll have Vista on it.

It's the same old saw, M$ has had such dominence in the marketsplace for so long that it will take years (decades?) before their marketshare is seriously diminished...

The other sad fact fact is that LINUX, or any other *NIX like system with the exception of Apple, are not in position to fill any vacuum that might exist should M$ sales decline.

After 20 years in the IT business, I've seen this same M$/marketshare argument many, many times. Nothing has changed...

But I'm still chagrined to see Redmond get slapped...

One think I'd like to point out is that while everyone says "Hey, use a REAL OS, like Linux" there aren't a lot of games that run really well under that OS. Also, there's not a ton of people out there that know anything about Linux, let alone how to make games run under it.

Now, I know about WINE and such, but let's face it: until game manufacturers start making them for "other" OS's, we're pretty much stuck with Winbloz.

How about we start putting pressure on game manufacturing companies to start making them for MAC's and Linux as well? Won't happen? Then we're stuck with the default OS, which seems to help only Bill Gates.

It would be interesting, as someone pointed out in another posting in this thread, to see what would happen if M$ pulled out of Europe due to the ruling here, wouldn't it?

My guess is that all of Europe would have to either give in to what M$ wants/does, or there's be a huge surge in Linux sales. That might actually make game manufactuerers start adding Linux versions of their games, however, so it might not be such a bad idea for M$ to pull out (silver lining, and all that).

On another note, no Vista on my PC until there is no other alternative to it, i.e., when games say "Requirements: Vista or later", THEN, and only then will Vista see the light of my CRT.