While waiting for the price (to fall) of the newly released Splinter Cell: Double Agent I thought I’d download the PC demo. I still have the Xbox – I will hold off buying Xbox 360 until I get a decent HD LCD TV – otherwise I would have downloaded demo to the Xbox 360 and tried it.

I was unpleasantly surprised to find out that the game won’t run on my system at all! It requires shader model 3.0 while my Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro only supports shader model 2.0. This is on a Dell Inspiron 2 years old laptop that almost had top of the line graphics card when I got it.

For comparison, Microsoft requires shader model 2.0 for Aero Glass effects in Windows Vista.

I guess this is one more reason to stick with the consoles – their hardware is fixed and stays fixed throughout the lifetime of the console.