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PC gaming is flourishing and becoming more diverse as the months go by, games developers are demanding more and more processing power and added hardware resources from component manufactures. There is a steady stream of essential hardware such as CPU's Graphics cards, RAM and chipsets being released. Constant evolution in hardware is undoubtedly the driving force behind the major developments and noticeable advances in this industry but there is one constant which it dragging it's feet.
Microsoft can rightly claim they make big efforts to enable developers to produce better and better games, this is evident by their constant development of DirectX, even if the updates are far and few between and can at times cause a myriad of compatibility issues.

Gamers that play high end games will always find ways to get the best from their games because they are willing and in most cases enjoy the challenge of configuring the OS to work at optimum performance with games.
If getting the best from Windows require configuring the OS by specifying what services you want to have running; dedicated gamers will do this. It's a laborious task but made easier by applications such as Nlite and you have to know what services to prevent from installing and what ones are essential to smooth operation of your computer.

End users that play mid range games are not going to get the best from their games and this is primarily because they do not have the knowledge or will power to configure Windows step by step.
Their games will have to cope with system resources being hogged by unnecessary services running in the background and this is far more apparent in mid ranged systems, which is what most of these users will have or low range computers sold as a general purpose computers.
Microsoft will always been seen has as a middle of the road OS developer because of this.
By now Microsoft should have developed a tool that is similar to Nlite and more user friendly, I'm sure they already though of this but the biggest possible stumbling block is; having a tool like this would make it clear to most user that a significant amount of the silent applications that come as a part of Windows is rarely needed and only serves to hamper the OS.

Microsoft could have also supplied two versions of Vista in one box set, instead of confusing the public; they could have created a version of Vista which does everything any home or small business user could want, a second version which would essentially be the same but striped of all services but the ones needed to play games and use multimedia applications. This would circumvent the need for the user to heavily customise the OS and allow a better gaming and multimedia experience for people that are not willing to put in the effort with the aim of getting better performance.
Naturally the gaming OS would be quicker to install because of the greatly reduced front print and would be as easy to load as rebooting your PC and choosing the correct OS option.

A third version would be needed, targeted at large scale Enterprise.

Digital Thief

Over the years I've leaned more and more about computer hardware and software, while this has given the knowledge to access valuable resources on the net as well as the means to earn a living, it has also given me the means to acquire almost any digital information that I want.

In particular I as well as many others find it increasing easy to access and obtain copyright data in whatever form that data might takes.

I've been thinking about this for a few months and realised that over the last five years I've stolen thousands of dollars of digital assets in the form of music, film, software and games. The most alarming thing about my thievery is that I would until now rarely think twice about the consequences of my actions or the moral implications.
I am not alone in this casual disregard for the law when it comes to what most see as an extremely minor crime because of the fact; it is so easy to commit and without any apparent victims.

The consequences of obtaining digital properties without paying for them; will become more stark and detrimental as we get more ways to access digital data and more people learn how to acquire digital properties which previously require some technical know how and in some cases, the right contacts on the internet.

It could be argued that we have already reached a critical cross roads but have yet to acknowledge this because we have no methods at present to combat this threat to an ever growing and diverse digital industry.

We have a generation now growing up that will largely believe; there is little moral or social consequences to acquiring whatever copyright digital properties from the net because they can claim “everyone does it” and this is true in the broad sense of the term.
I'm sure that in most homes with computers and internet access; people give space consideration to downloading a song or watching copyright content on sites such as Youtube.
I've had a look at the software and other digital content that I have on my computer and most of it is legal. This is not because I made a concerted effort to stop downloading copyright content but because lately I've found it easier to acquire freeware as opposed to what should be “paid for software”.
I have no copyright music on my computer because my portable media player is currently not working and I can listen to good quality music on sites such as Seeqpod.

I do however have a few copyright games on my computer, this is because you are unlikely to get freeware games that are of the same quality that big name game developers can produce. I'm probably most unrepentant about Illegally downloading games because I'm rarely satisfied with any game and see little point in wasting my money on something that I will inevitably be disappointed with.

Although I would not say that I am remorseful for the digital assets I've stolen, it does concern me that we take such a liberal and defeatist attitude towards a practice which we will have to tackle because of the negative social implications of it's continual appeasement.

The infringement of digital copyright is certainly not the most pressing of moral dilemmas but if this aberration is not addressed quickly and the most determined mindset; it will in the near future be near impossible to halt it's proliferation.