This kind of crap is making me very seriously consider never installing Vista and finding some other way to play my Windows games, once they won't run on XP. Or, I'll just play console games and keep the Windows XP-capable games around to enjoy until my either my hardware dies or I do. I'm thinking I'll go before my PC does. The title of this blog entry comes from a Computerworld article, which is linked at the bottom of this post. I suggest every gamer planning on using Vista read the article and understand what it means to them and any future hardware plans they may have going forward. I've been using Microsoft OSes for a long time, longer than some of the visitors to these forums have been alive ( I took my first programming class in 1981 on a TRS-80 using MS-DOS). I've put up with a lot (no comments from the Linux gallery, please. Just keep the 'stones and glass houses' in mind before you decide to comment ;) ) and I've watched as Windows grew from an OS you needed to know very well to install and use at all (as Linux had been until very recently and Unix will always be) to an OS that can figure out what hardware you have and provide, at the very least, rudimentary functionality for it until the proper drivers are installed. (Mac users don't have to worry about that because they don't have any hardware to install that Steve Jobs hasn't already approved. And you thought Microsoft was a monopoly... ) However, I am willing to venture into, for me, uncharted waters if I must in order to use my PC the way I want to. The last thing I need, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this, is Microsoft trying to wrench yet another Vista purchase from me simply because I had the audacity to upgrade my PC's hardware! That is an arrogance that Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison couldn't match on their best days, although Steve has managed to charge the Mac faithful for what are basically service packs for going on a decade now and convince them that it's a great deal, but that's another story. At least he doesn't make them pony up again for replacing a motherboard or CPU. I sincerely hope Microsoft rethinks this licensing move before the consumer versions of Vista are released next year. Read the Computerworld article Added 10/20/2006: I was quoted in a followup article on Computerworld! Here's the article link. I'm Don Smutny, the second person quoted in the article.