yeah the only stuff I ever pira... er... demo is stuff I'm really not sure about and they don't put out a demo and the stuff thats just impossible to find (at least for a price that doesn't put windows to shame) like Soldiers Of Anarchy & Chaos Gate, both of which I would buy in a minute if they show up on GOG.
I used to "demo" windows but after half a decade I decided that it was worth paying for XP, this was mostly because I found a student discount that meant I could get it at just over the price of a retail game so I snapped it up. With vista I got a cheap OEM copy and my other 2 active xp licences are OEMs from my laptops.
Wow prosecuted by metallica? That almost famous! The worst thats happened to me is I got an email telling me to stop sharing harry potter books, my first thought was I'd have to download them first and that would be after developing an interest in rather dull sounding wizard teen fiction

you know how games devs always say that most of the people complaining about their software in the support forums are the ones with the dodgy copies that don't work right? Just saying...
Win7 is essentially a vista relaunch, but this time they've got the hardware and drivers better prepared for it.
While it's true there are no major upgrades for vista, everything is just much more user-friendly and logical... its a shame that MS finally did all the little things we've been asking for for years... and no-one noticed. :-(

Nah, they noticed and bitched incessantly that it annoyed them

i get your drift but i've actually tried a 100% real copy of my friend first.
so i rather play safe and try a demo one first instead of buying and seeing it sucks :)

I too use Linux. Kubuntu 64bit to be specific.
I love how (almost) everything just works and that all my software is up to date all the time without any hassle.
I tried Vista 64bit, because I got a free version from my university, but it was a very time consuming to find and download all those drivers for my hardware as Windows didn't have them on their CD and couldn't find them in their online database :/
In the end there was no driver available for my SB 5.1 soundcard and my G15 keyboard wouldn't work despite official Vista 64 drivers :(
Really disappointing experience.

Just go to one of their concerts (like I did many years ago when trying to get into the underwear of a girl who was a fan of theirs) - that's enough of a prosecution of the ears!
And that's coming from a life-long fan of AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and countless other classic rock bands....
No, I like my musicians to be enjoying playing their music at me, not racing to see who gets to the end of the song first.

I've been using Linux for years but settled on Gentoo - though I've tried Ubuntu a few times and thought it was good.
Windows XP plugs the gaming hole in Gentoo, not used Vista yet.
My only experience with Vista was trying to get a friend's new PC to work wirelessly - in XP, I would have fixed the issue in minutes but it took me a couple of hours on Vista.
So despite having been a computer geek for 30+ years, I had the same problems adjusting to the new layout in Vista that a Windows user might have adjusting to Linux! :-)

Mac OS X Leopard and soon to upgrade to Snow Leopard as well, haven't had time to go to my local Apple reseller for it. Boot up Win XP for games.

I use Ubuntu and I am quite happy with it. On my Machine I also use vxbox with xp running in the virtual machine, and on my laptop I run windows 7 ;)

I use LInux Mint 10.

I'd been using Windows XP up until about two months ago when the entire OS had one of those massive strokes that tends to happen to XP when you're running a lot of applications at once, the type only solved by a hard restart. And of course I couldn't get back in, no SAFE made, no system restore points, nuthin'.

Usually I just reinstall the OS when this happens, unfortunately my laptop's internal optical DVD drive has failed so I can't install from a disc. I tried to boot an .iso of XP from a USB drive as my BIOS has that capability, however no matter what utility I used I couldn't get a working bootable copy of USB XP to install itself. I wasn't interested in Windows VISTA or Windows 7; I wanted a lightweight and relatively unbloated OS.

Finally I gave up and just went with Linux, which these days seems heavily geared towards digital distros and USB booting anyway. I actually love Linux Mint and happily use it as a media player, browser, word processor, and WIFI device. IT was one of the smoothest, most reliably working out-of-the-box OSes I'd ever used, and the software manager is a piece of cake, getting most of my favorite third-party apps I used, or their open-source equivalents (like qbittorrent, or Exaile music player).

Unfortunately I've had great difficulty getting games to run in WINE. I know theoretically people do it but I'm at sea with it so far. I can't install anything from my old burned .iso images that I'd mount under windows, and the GOG installers install but crash in WINE. I've googled some tutorials but they all assume I know more about Linux than I do, which is precious little and I often can't follow the directions, especially anything to do with command lines.

Can't you just replace the drive? Your average computer repair shop has mountains of the things, and if you're content with a CD-only drive they're probably giving those away at this point.

Linux is fine and all for general purposes but it's a non-option for dedicated gamers.

Nonsense, I'm a dedicated gamer who uses Linux! Really, with Wine, dosbox and scummvm, there aren't that many games you can't play. Indeed, with the troubles people seem to be having getting older games running on Windows 7, you could say that was a 'non-option' too.

Anyway, Mint 10 is an excellent distro. However, I didn't like the sort of software they installed as standard. Like Flash and various other proprietary codecs. Those are the sorts of things I would rather choose whether I had them or not. That's why I've stuck with Mint 8, which I've just sort of got used to. That's the good thing about Linux, it isn't a one size fits all approach.

PS. noone wants to mention the necro? :P

Necro.

Anyway, I use a dual boot of Windows 7 x64 and Arch Linux. I generally use Arch for everything (I was an Ubuntu/Mint guy until I felt the both of them were getting incredibly bloated) and really only switch over to Windows for gaming due to my computer's ass performance (and using Wine doesn't really help things at all). Just not a fan of Windows, but I keep it around for necessity.

I was hesitating...
Perhaps it's supposed to be unmentioned and remain a secret, like "wtf happened to aliasalpha and rowdy".


[edit]
And to stay on top. Regular win7x64 here with a touch of Directory Opus and Fences.

That's a great point. WTF happened to Aliasalpha?!?!

Think we can wait 'til the PM system is introduced? Or should we form a search party?
And since i'm OTing, what's the story behind that pen? The video was hillarious.