People gotta stop treating Demos like they were the real deal, they are not. Stop and think for a sec, why don't you get those graphics you see on the screenshots?

Well, probably because most features are disabled, and saved for the final game. Maybe some settings for the graphic have been cut out because they (MS) want to save it for the final game.

NEVER treat a Demo as if it was a small version of the real game to come. Treat it more like a Beta of the game with some bugs and features turned off. Yes I had very HIGH expectations on this game too, but Im not suprised its less "Eye Candy" in this demo.

So before you judge a game thats in Demo status, try to think that its not really a demo, just a tryout for you to test and play around before the real game comes out.

The FEAR demo is good example of this, its just plain horrible, people with good computers can't turn pretty much every Eye Candy setting on before they notice HUGE lagg.

Im sure FEAR will turn out better in the final version.

You are correct about that. For a fact, all developers have to cut the texture sizes down to 50% and exclude other options from demos in other to get the filesize down to a reasonable point. The AoE3 developers admitted that they had just copied the full game over to another machine, and then just deleted what should not be in the demo and said that among other things, high poly models on some things are missing.

On almost all the screens, there is a strange Mist thing that gives the game that extra Atmosphere, and it makes it look good. Or is it photoshop edited just to give it a better look?

I see no such thing on the demo, I know they have cut back loads of stuff for the final release, but is there anyone out there with a PC strong enough to turn on all the Eye Candy and see if you get something close to those screens?

XP sucks 2K is better and XP uses lots of ram.

however i found 2k to be alot more unstable, so xp makes up for it there. besides it doesnt make much difference if youve got good ram