For once, this is a toppic from me that has nothing to do with a tech support issue. As a fan of the Myst series, I really enjoy the kinds of games that encourage exploration and that have puzzles that seem more natural and contextual to the environment, that are more along the lines of getting a machine to work than putting back together a rubics cube. I do plan on playing the other two games left in the series (Revelations and End of Ages), but I was wondering if anybody had any suggestions for games, on GOG or otherwise, that have this kind of puzzle element, where observation is paramount but it's not neccesarily insanely hard?

The Journeyman Project series is great series with those features. You travel through time stopping people from creating ripples in time, thereby protecting the universe. They're not available at gog yet, but they're quite popular so you could probably find them someplace.
The Dark Fall series is also very good. It's a horror/mystery series.

I played Journeyman 1 and 3 (pretty much wreked 3 for myself by clicking every time a hint presented itself, but I was young and stupid). If only I could find the second one on sale somewhere as it seems to be a rarity.
Dark Fall sounds interesting, although I'm iffy on the horror aspect. Not that I don't like horror games, it's just that Myst is/was something you could pick up and play any time when you were in pretty much any mood (save an impatient one). Horror games I have to be in the mood for. Plus I'd like to find a puzzle game that doesn't kill you off if you mess something up, something that made Myst great in that you didn't really feel pressured to get things right the first time or were ever discouraged from experimenting with things.

You don't die in Dark Fall, save for bad endings. Dark fall isn't the normal "in your face" horror (I haven't ever seen blood or anything) but I know what you mean.
I bet you could find JMAN 2 at ebay or amazon used.
Schizm: Mysterious Journey is pretty cool, as well as the Tex Murphy games (Although those have some side-perspective adventure gaming as well.) Riddle of the Sphinx is good if you can get it to work.