I do think games are easier these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I recently played a couple of my old Amiga games (Alien Breed, Xenon 2 Megablast and Paradroid 97) and I was surprised at how much I sucked at those games. Just give me Wolverine and Bionic Commando (Rearmed), those have a nice fun-challenge balance for me.
It's really simple for me: no XMarks, Firebug and Adblock support (3 Firefox plugins) means no Chrome for me. Any other feature (speed, "web app support" or whatever) simple can't fill that hole.
It's really not as simple as "but people already have a choice". Why do you think IE has such a big market share? Because it's the best web browser there is? Or because it's the first one you'll see on your new computer?
And trying to apply any metaphor here is not going to work, since Microsoft Windows still has a monopoly on O/S software on PCs. Yes, I know (and use) Linux, but most people don't know -and don't want to know- those alternatives.
Computer ...
The reason that the guy playing sucked, was that it wasn't a guy playing. It was the AI controlling both Sheva and Chris (!) That's why it's different every time you run the benchmark.
So you're better of using a six year old (almost obsolete) O/S which doesn't support DirectX 10? Sorry, but Windows 7 most certainly >> Windows XP.
#8 It doesn't run the games I want
Don't get me wrong: I love Linux (especially Ubuntu). But if I want to get the most out of my GTX260 video card I have to run Windows. It's just the way it is. Of course you have Wine (which will run Half-life 2 pretty decent), but that will never truly be a solution since it's always three steps behind.
On a related note: Windows Vista was the best thing that could happen to Linux (it got me looking for alternatives)... but Windows...
In theory: yes. In practice: probably not.