The $15 a month is just rediculous. You could spend $1000 and not own a single game. I can understand charging for online services like XBox Live (which I have had a positive experience with) but GameTap isn't worth it.

The free version of fallout that's available via gametap... well... just sucks. I installed it earlier today... ugh.
For one, it's some kind of archive/iso/single file, so not only can you not patch from the 1.0 version that they've got, you cannot apply any of the mods to make it run in higher resolution, windowed mode, or anything else.
If I hadn't found my original fallout CD earlier this evening, I probably would've bought that instead of fallout tactics (which I never got around to picking up before but just bought and am about to play). So, for most people, there won't really be a comparison. No bug fixes, no higher resolution, etc. It's GOG FTW all the way :)

Steam's not quite as bad, since instead of paying a monthly fee or whatever to just have access to the games, you pay a one-time price. And I think you do own the copy of the game with Steam, you just can't play them without it. It's not a legal restriction like Gametap. But yeah. Nobody's arguing that GOG isn't better :)

Link to mod please?

My problem with gametap is that they use a virtual disk for DRM. The games are installed in as an encrypted file that the client then mounts to launch the game. The biggest problem with that for me is that I run a 64-bit OS for work-related reasons and they never bothered to write their kernel driver for 64-bit and 64-bit kernels can't load 32-bit drivers. They told me they have no plans to do so any time soon (this was 1.5 years ago) and suggested I install a 32-bit OS. I told them I'm not dual-booting to use their service and asked to cancel my service with them (I had pre-paid for a year and was about half way through when I needed to upgrade to 64-bit). They oblieged and pro-rated my the rest of the year as a refund. To this day, I still can't use their service. And, it's not like it's hard to write agnostic software if you do it right and then compile both 64- and 32-bit versions.

I like the service here at GoG.com ; Granted being skint as I am, I can't buy much but so far the two purchases have run flawlessly, the download was high speed and the little extras like soundtracks delighted me, but then I'm easily delighted with such things :)
Nothing against gametap but the service has always given me a "rental" impression and that's not something I like in my games.

couldn't you use virtualization and use their service that way? not suggesting you should, just wondering if it is technically possible.

It is possible. But even with VT enabled the performance is usually subpar. Trust me... I've tried.
I think it is their emulation layer. I can play non Gametap stuff in VM and it works fine (with VT) but any middleweight Gametap title is darn near unplayable with stuttering etc. And this is with a pretty hefty VM machine (2gb of ram, dual core etc, full VM drivers) running off of a Q6600 SLI setup.
Honestly Gametap isn't worth the effort for me. 64bit is the wave of the future. Steam works on 64bit, GoG on 64bit. Every game I own works on 64bit. Why can't Gametap realize this and get with the program. They need to realize that this is the 21st century. People want features and openness, not excuses. Companies that fall behind the curve don't fit the business model in the 21st century. You have to innovate to survive.

I'm constantly frustrated when I download software and games that don't work on my system (also 64 bit). I love that GOG works.

Eh, gametap isn't worth it. Monthly fee to *rent* games. No thanks. GoG blows that out of the water.
Plus the games on GoG work fine on my 64bit XP, that gametap wont run on.

My problem with gametap is that it won't work with 64bit versions of Windows. And if you play modern games, I don't see how you can get by with only 2GB of ram anymore. Beside that. The games are unmoddable, the support is virtually nonexistent and worst of all; they are owned by turner. And to top it off: GOG is done by CDProjekt who made The Witcher... :)
I do have a gametap account which I use on my laptop, though. It's nice for those random games you wouldn't otherwise buy or try, but since they're just there you can easily give them a shot.

x86 can use up to 4Gb, not 2Gb. :)

3.25 GB to be correct...

GameTap was worth the $10 to me a year ago, because in spite of its failings it was just plain fun to use. The games were easy to get at, they always worked, it all happened pretty smoothly in their little client and whatever emulators they used.
This last May they screwed it all up. Everything went into your browser, including lots of the older games. The switchover was sudden and mandatory, and the setup that was supposed to move you from the old system to the new one lost a lot of save information without backing any of it up or even using the recycle bin. Personalized stuff like favorites lists were also thrown out.
I won't chime in on anything they're truly giving away, but I can say firsthand that save information for the Interplay RPGs I played on GameTap was not compatible with normal versions of the games. (Playing through the beginning of Baldur's Gate again was particularly painful.) It should also be noted that from time to time they fail or decline to renew rights on certain games and they cease to work even if you've already downloaded them. For example, they dropped Alpha Centauri at the end of last year and everyone simply lost their games in progress. (This was especially nasty since SMAC is very difficult to come by legitimately - not that anyone should have to since we all bought it ten years ago - and it has never been properly cracked.)

this is correct. 32-bit system are able to manage 4 GB of memory. but can't adress 4 GB of RAM because the system also needs to adress memory for the BIOS, GPU, etc... so in the end, you'll end up with 3,25 - 3,5 GB of RAM. with PAE you can adress more RAM when running a 32 bit system, but many drivers tend to crash when PAE mode is enabled.