I was at a store checking out some software and noticed that Halo 2 requires Vista, it's the only OS listed and in huge bolt text says Requires Vista. Anyone else heard anything about this?

Really wasn't looking at buying the game, just more or less irratated that MS is trying to shove Vista down our throats.

Hah, great way to lose sales.

Same happening with Win2000 vs WinXP these days...

Only good news is, that most Games still run (either displaying a generic warning that Win2000 isn't officially supported or 3rd party is delivering Patches for the bogus OS Check routines, after which removal the respective Game of course runs picture perfect...)

But considering how few Games turn out to be actually good, not a great loss. The last years, Games industry seems to have completely turned into a money-making machine... Lots of Quantity but only a handful of Games with actual Quality.

Guess one day I'll be playing only on my Notebook (if at all).
Having no Network connection at all, its OS is basically irrelevant.

But well, if that's what they want... They get it (98% Linux here already).

I already start telling people around me that I can't and won't give any tech support if they mention the word "Vista" in their query.

...going against the flow never feeled better, thanks to Windows "hasta la" Vista "baby".
(and that's not only me, I'm seeing more and more "normals" rather going MacOS than Vista, something that never happened before in my local area)

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What I like most about new, shiny MicroSoft products is the talk about how much better and efficient they supposedly are....

Here's a cool experiment you can do :
Take a halfway modern System and install Vista, WinXP and Win95A - then hack the clock and measure time from OS boot to 'ready to use' on the Desktop.

Win95A will sit ready on the Desktop after less than 4 Seconds, with a Memory footprint of less than 20MB.

Then attempt to achieve the same with the newer Windows Versons ;)

wrote on 08.08.07 at 22:24:44:

Win95A will sit ready on the Desktop after less than 4 Seconds, with a Memory footprint of less than 20MB. Then attempt to achieve the same with the newer Windows Versons ;)

And the funny thing is there really isn't anything the OS can't do. I ran Win98SE for years and aside from crashes traced backed to programs leaking memory or doing something stupid with the memory I had no problems with it.

I minimized some of the BSOD by being selective about which programs I used (Netscape would take down the OS on a regular basis, I gave up and moved over to IE6 and had far fewer problems.

As far as I am concened the OS just has to make the programs easy to use, nothing more. I have no use for flashy interfaces, the OS should be unobstrusive as possible.

Ahh the good ole days...

I enjoyed playing DOS games on my 486/50 with 8MB and a 2.1 GB H.D.D.

I had installed DOS 6.22 with all the SB and the CDrom drivers. Then later I installed Win95 but could exit to true DOS for my DOS games. I was forced to go to Win95 because the newer games coming out requires Windows 95  >:(

Umm...sorry to tell you all this, but HALO 2 for PC has been hacked. ::)

So - NO, it DOES NOT "require" Vista. ;)

It can be run on WinXP as long as you use an 'unnofficial' patch. 8)

(although I do admit that the hack is not 100% perfect) :P

BTW - I STILL own a 25MHz Cx486SX/387SX Hybrid system that I use for all those old DOS games and some old software that no longer runs on WinXP. ;)

its a marketing strategy of microsoft to release halo2 for vista only. but the game itself only requires DX8.

It's a marketing strategy that's trying to sell an over bloated, DRM infested, buggy as hell OS that I will be going to Macs before I install that on another machine of mine.

MS knows this, they know how many people are not happy with this OS at all and in order to push sales that would not other wise happen, are forcing users to move to it in order to play the games. It's wrong, it's bull...., and it's an indication on how far MS knows it screwed up with this release.  

wrote on 09.08.07 at 04:41:15:

Ahh the good ole days... I enjoyed playing DOS games on my 486/50 with 8MB and a 2.1 GB H.D.D. I had installed DOS 6.22 with all the SB and the CDrom drivers. Then later I installed Win95 but could exit to true DOS for my DOS games. I was forced to go to Win95 because the newer games coming out requires Windows 95  >:(

Hi Guys, hi old friend Gamma. Yea, sounds like my 2nd pc (backup). I have a Sound Blaster 16 ISA card in there, and the Voodoo 3 3500 TV Tuner card. My 2nd pc (Backup) is a AMD, it's one of the fastest pc's to have a AGP 1.0 slot, cpu at 900Mhz.

Well, about your DOS thingy, DosBox made a new version, I think it's 0.70, which is even more compatible now. I tried it with Syndicate Wars, a cyber punk game I like which has great music... and well, it ran Syndicate Wars flawlessly now.

And yea, I agree with gdonovan. I don't like Windows Vista, and pulling this stunt won't encourage sales. It's like with Shadowrun, I love the Genesis version from 15 years ago, but I'm not going to spend 250 dollars on a o.s. which I consider to be crappy and vulnerable and then spend another 200 in software compatible products and then 50 bucks for the game. It's not worth it.

I get it though, Direct X 10 has a much different header than DX9, but still, to maximize sales as those greedy CEO's want, you must make a product available to most people. It's like if FalconFly only hosted drivers to forum members who have been here for 2 years. Microsoft has made a stupid move there, prooving like it has with Windows 98, that it doesn't care about former customers.

wrote on 08.08.07 at 22:24:44:

Here's a cool experiment you can do : Take a halfway modern System and install Vista, WinXP and Win95A - then hack the clock and measure time from OS boot to 'ready to use' on the Desktop. Win95A will sit ready on the Desktop after less than 4 Seconds, with a Memory footprint of less than 20MB. Then attempt to achieve the same with the newer Windows Versons ;)

well...if you want representative results you must compare the times the OS needs to boot with the best system from 95 (for win95), the best system from 2001 (for xp) and the best system from november 06 or january 07 for vista...
if you think this is a bad idea why not try this test with a high-end system in 2034? i guess all systems will boot up in 1 sec...

Actually that won't work, because all MicroSoft OS'es after Win95 included more and more timing based Init Routines. That means you could boot if off a RAM-Disk with 12GB/sec bandwidth and it would still take 5 times longer than Win95.

It's a flaw by design, not external System performance.

When comparing highest end Systems of their respective time, the results will get closer but the trend will be the same.

I got Win2000 running off a 2100MHz Dual Core CPU with 2GB of PC2-800 DDR2 and a 160GB SATA drive. That's alot faster than anyhing in service back in 2000.
Still, I will be unable to attain the performance, responsiveness and boot times of Win95 on its respective dated Hardware, unless I use a really slow Harddrive of its time...

wrote on 10.08.07 at 14:05:26:

well...if you want representative results you must compare the times the OS needs to boot with the best system from 95 (for win95), the best system from 2001 (for xp) and the best system from november 06 or january 07 for vista...

I don't agree- Why should the hardware be locked in time just because you are using one OS? Do you leave your computer un-upgraded after assembling or purchasing it?

Of course not- As prices drop on hardware people (computer savy ones)  tend to upgrade to make the machine faster and more responsive till it becomes unreasonable to do so due to platform changes like PCI-e.

I'm still running Win2000Pro because there is no compelling reason for me to run XP or Vista. All the applications I need run on it just fine & it is stable... I see no reason to "lock myself" into past hardware when better is available and supported by the OS or use some bloated excuse of an OS that will not run my applications any faster or better.