Microsoft on DirectX 10

[Demirug]

It will if someone will make D3D10 to OpenGL translation layer.

Maybe the Wine developers will do it. Theire making great progress with the D3D9 layer so far.

Then we wouldn't need Vista. Or any Windows for that matter.

Sure that could be a solution but it will requires an OpenGL driver with extensions for every “D3D10 featureâ€￾ Additional it will be more work as an D3D9 layer as there are more general functions (effect system, shader reflection, …) in the D3D10 Core.

I expect that someone will try this. I am even expect that one will try to get D3D10 apps running on D3D9 hardware.

 

[Sunrise]

Win98 was a bloated Win95 yet almost everyone upgraded. WinXP is not a bloated Win98 yet most folks upgraded as well.

I´m not really sure what you´re trying to tell people here.

Win98 wasn´t bloated at all, what exactly was bloated about it ? It was a lot more stable than Win95, without needing any fixes at all. It ran great right out of the box, without any need to upgrade your hardware, the OS itself was relatively cheap to upgrade / $100.
-> That´s value for several years.

WinXP is based on a completely different kernel, EVEN more stable than Win98, it´s "graphics bloat" doesn´t have to concern you, cause you can turn it off completely and it has a lot of useful stuff (networking, NTFS etc.), even though it was/is a little more costly / $100 - $250.
-> That´s even more value.

Compared to those, Vista is gonna be a bitch when it comes to it´s hardware requirements, while still running relatively slow, not very responsive and it needs a real good graphics cards for it´s GUI alone, not even talking about games. Pricing taken out of the equation, because MS apparently realized it´s better to offer Vista cheaper than they originally expected to sell it.

I expect Vista to have the same (and probably higher) impact as XP did. It's a bigger step over WinXP than XP was over Win98.

Yes, Vista will have an impact, but that doesn´t mean it has to be good value. Even more, if you take out Vista´s new graphics subsystem, it´s new fancy, dancy GUI graphics, it´s nothing revolutionary at all. Don´t confuse Vista with D3D10.

Then you should have no complaints about XP vs '98 when it comes to the "perfectly working and stable" criterias. I have absolutely no doubt Vista would surpass XP in these criterias.

A "perfectly working and stable" is subjective.

Some things will be improved and some things certainly aren´t "perfect" by any means, but those things are evolutionary steps going forward. For the majority of all people WinXP is stable enough, subjective or not.

I get the feeling you simply don't like paying for a new Microsoft OS because all you do with your machine is to play games. I think Vista is the most significant OS from Microsoft even if games were never created. My opinion, of course

Games and all things multimedia play a major role in the development of every (MS) OS. I don´t know what you´re talking about. MS revolutionized the world, but like everyone that reached a certain position, they will also milk the cow just to make even more money, while the really useful stuff will be either delayed or skipped until the next OS happens.