For now, perhaps.

As more people discover streaming video, and demand better picture quality and less jittering, the demand for bandwidth will skyrocket. One HD movie per week would be over 200GB per year, probably closer to double that.

I used it to set up a demand dialler and firewall on my old 486.

It was interesting because there was an error in the diald package. The distro included a newer version that used different file locations, but the install script still used the old file locations. I learned a lot figuring that one out!

Wing Commander 2, now, that was hard to beat.

I found WC2 had only 1 mission that was near impossible. WC3 had several, as did WC4.

In the case of Thief 3 . . . Quite a lot of the people who played it first like it.

Actually, I know this to be true. However, several of those people that I know revised their opinion of Thief 3 after going back and playing Thief 1 and 2.

every Civ game has at least a couple low difficulties that should be trivial for anyone who enjoys that sort of game.

I found Civ3 and 4 had no difficulty levels that were easy, let alone trivial. As I said, "Even at the easiest difficulty settings these games are very hard to beat."

Might and Magic IX - Went for eye candy over game play.

The third Krondor game - More eye candy, virtually no game play.

Thief 3 - "Consolized" the game. Missions were composed of several small linked play areas instead of large rambling areas to explore. This was done to adapt the game to console hardware limitations.

MOO3 - An example of change for its own sake. Did anyone actually like this game?

Wing Commander III and IV - Examples of challenge disorder. There were too many missions in these games that were virtually impossible to beat, and the dynamic difficulty setting system made it impossible to adjust the games to your personal skill level.

SimCity 2 and later - Added too much complexity, ruining the game experience. Remember: KISS!

Civ3 and 4 - More challenge disorder. Even at the easiest difficulty settings these games are very hard to beat.

There are more, I am sure, but I'll let other Slashdotters come up with them. And yes, I am aware that many people enjoyed many of these games but, speaking from my own knowledge (from conversations with other gamers), each of the games I have listed lost a large part of their audience, with only the hard core fans of the franchise claiming to like them.

Same as in the movie "The Day The Earth Stood Still" I think?

Which one? The remake and the original take different views.

And when that happens, I will almost certainly move to Linux as my primary OS (right now, for various reasons, it is secondary).

I've heard that one before.

Which is why, last time I did a Vista install, both the printer and network drivers mysteriously disappeared a week later, only to mysteriously reappear the next day. New equipment, with Vista certified drivers, btw.

Okay, I'll give you that one.

and this perception exists, perhaps, because Vista really DOES suck?

I keep hearing that the problems with Vista have been solved, but every time (yes, EVERY time) I have tried Vista, or set it up for someone, I have had problems. I simply no longer believe any claims that Vista has been fixed.

Fine, I looked at the new features list. One or two interesting items, but nothing that makes me sit up and go "Gotta have it!"

I tossed it because it has such poor support for Win98 guests (no shared folders, or other tools). I run many older OSes as guests, so I'm sticking with VMWare.