CNET 113
Simon McGirr 245666 working with Aqeel Akbar, Kenneth Barrs and Chris Lamerton.

Operating Systems are far more demanding than previous years, as expected, the commercialization of computers has rapidly grown exponetially since the internet made communicating to random people around the world much easier.  The new Windows OS Vista is changing the market for graphics cards.  The makers will no longer set the limits of the graphics card... to a certain extent.  Vista will have the capability to use Direct X more effectively as its built into the OS, to explain Direct X: 

I will use it in a game context for example, when playing World of Warcraft (WoW) there are many users on at one time, if you go into a big city where there are loads of users in one area the Direct X has to quickly render all of the characters effienctly.  In WoW there are many different races i.e Undead, Tauren, Human etc, so Direct X knows this and renders only one race then duplicates it saving space and memory and then adds the characters attire seperately, this greatly reduces lag in the game.

Microsoft want the monopoly in this specific area, they will control how graphics are used not just on a user level but on a manufacture level too, companies will now have to cap there ever growing standards so that ever user gets the best possible graphics, presumably at a more affordable price.  In one way capping the performance is a good thing, obviously upgrading is a must but imagine kitting out your PC so that you can keep up with the growing game industry and then a few months down the line a newer and more demanding game is release for example "Crysis" there aren't many computers that can run this if all the settings were turned up to maximum, this does seem pointless and more importantly very expensive.

As is the case with life in general, no matter how foolish it may ultimately be, first impressions strongly influence how something is received. It doesn’t matter if you’ve built the most powerful OS on the planet, if it isn’t visually appealing, and the GUI can’t be customized to fit the user, then you’re going to lose potential customers.

Direct X 10 became the foundation for a graphics Application Program Interface (API) that could strengthen the way games look in comparison to the new level of graphics set by next-generation consoles like the PS3 and XBOX 360. The new graphics API will have tougher requirements for graphics cards, with a very particular guaranteed feature sets. The behavior of DX10 cards will be defined so that developers can get the expected output from their code with no tweaking necessary to account for multiple graphics cards and vendors.

Vista represents the next step for Windows on all accounts (including the GUI), and it’s going to be interesting to see what the general public says once they’re able to use the OS for an extended period of time. The graphic engines in and of themselves may be strong, but if the implementation is poor, will people really go gaga over the interface?