hi. i don't play pc games often but there are some that peak my interest once in awhile. Is there any alternative to Cedega as i don't play pc games enough to pay a monthly fee. thanks for any responses in advance.

You could try using WINE (thats what cedega and crossover office are based on).

i've tried it with the demo of a game i thought of getting and i can't get it too far into the install. I've never had any success with wine.

You could try using WineX, which is the development (CVS) version of Cedega. It is free, but it might take some time to get it working. I've noticed that games rarely works 100% in Wine or WineX unless you tweak them a bit. Check out http://appdb.winehq.org/ to see if anyone else has managed to make your game of choise work in Wine or WineX.

There used to be a script "GetCVSWineX" floating around in the net some while ago; it automates the build and install process of WineX. Try if you can still find it. Otherwise you'll have to do a CVS checkout, build and install yourself.

This is the script you are looking for:

http://winecvs.linux-gamers.net/index.php/Main_Page

Last time I used it (I believe it was this, what others could there be?) it does either straight wine or WineX(cedega basicly).

You don't need to pay a monthly fee, you can pay the minimum 3 months ($15), cancel and continue using Cedega. The developers don't mind people doing this, but it won't allow you access to future updates and keeping Cedega updated is a must for Steam-based games, not sure which others break occasionally.