If not, it's best to go back to console gaming with some of the next-gen consoles (choosing the Wii myself). As for Vista, well, if Bill Gate$ can't make Windows live up to superiority, then we have a bit of a pickle with some of the new stuff coming out...
The problem here is that console developers aren't given nearly enough choice as to what they are doing; it all goes through the console manufacturer, and it costs a lot of money just to get started.In the case of Nintendo, for example, developers are quite limited in terms of what they can do (especially with WFC) because of Nintendo's aim to be very easy to use and kid friendly.
...And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, I'm just saying that there's not really much choice for the developers.
i think that a lot of people will be amazed at how seamlessly the resource hogging 3D gui effects disappear when their games are running in full screen...
Very true :P
One of the reasons why PC OSs are required to be so much more bloaty than console firmwares (and I think it's idiotic to even have an OS, but I guess it's happened...) is because every piece of software written for Windows is not run through Microsoft, so we can't trust it to work as we want.
Thus, Windows needs some decent crash protection and other important security features. "This program has performed an illegal operation" is actually protecting you from important processes being destroyed (not killed though, just Destroyed!) which can result in serious consequences including, potentially, your hard drive being blasted.
That accounts for some of its processor use, anyway.
The noticeable use of memory for the GUI seems a bit harsh, but I can run it fine, and my computer is mid-range. I don't see how people can really expect old, low-range computers to run Vista in all its gooey goodness.
Any idea why the minimum graphics memory space is blanked out?
Are the lesser computers running in a text-based mode or something? :P
I'm actually excited about how Vista will be behaving a lot more like Linux.
Hopefully such a thing will make it easier for Windows users to get used to Linux, resulting in world peace and happiness :P