Currently I run Windows 7 on my gaming laptop. I have all my games under Steam and I've actually been a little afraid of using Linux on my gaming machine encase anything becomes (or even starts as) unplayable.

With the news on a possible Steam client for Linux, I've decent I'm gonna take the jump into Linux for gaming - if I can get any decent advice.

So, my question, as the topic states is which should I go for? CrossOver Games or Cedega?

The games I play mostly are Counter-Strike: Source, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2 (including Episode One, Episode Two, Deathmatch and Lost Coast) and the Unreal Tournament series. Oh and Battlefield 2 with the Project Reality mod.

I'd most appreciate if people could give me a little detail with their experiences with either platform and why you think it's better than the other (technical, not just 'because it rulez lolol' statements please!).

Oh, my gaming platform is an Acer Aspire 5740G - Core i3-330M 2.13GHz, 4Gb RAM (soon to be extended to 8Gb), 500Gb HDD (recently upgraded) with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 (512Mb dedicated)

Download a free trial and check the differences.
Also check this free tool
http://www.playonlinux.com/en

Oh, I'll be testing them myself, but I'd still like others opinions too

The true nuisance with Cedega though is the trial only allows ye to play Spore... And I have no interest in that "game" whatsoever :/ They should have packaged something better to trial, I think!

If you want to buy crossover if you give promo code TRIALUSERS you will have -60% about 15$ is the price.
Did you try playonlinux? I think it uses wine

I'm gonna give it a spin soon as Ubuntu is installed on this lappy... Gave cedega a try on my workstation

ALL of the above options uses wine. The major differences are the GUI to install/play the games, and/or it costs money. But under the hood, Cedega and POL are wine.

Personally, I use wine exclusively. Why get anything else? wine is usually updated first, then the addons get updated (Cedega, POL, etc)

Agreed.

There is really no reason to bother with Cedega or POL. Wine is fairly straight-forward and, what's more, it's free. Being a Linux hippy, I happily refuse to pay money for any type of software.

Free is one consideration.

The main thing I think of is "Which is the original"? Makes me think of the Distro forums here when someone asks "Which is best of the FOO based distros"?

Why go with a copy, or "based" distro? Go with the original. There's a reason why others copy their work.

And to me, Cedega is making money of the sweat of the wine devs, without adding enough "value added" work to make it worthwhile.

POL just adds a GUI to install and play the programs.

I'd rather "Keep the root" as it were

I've had good experiences with Crossover Pro. They seem like good people. A while back, they had a giveaway that completely hosed their servers - sign up and get a free copy of Pro. I picked up a free copy of $60 software. Updates cost $15 or so. Then they extend my service for a year due to their Lame Duck contest type thing.

Crossover does lots of things for me that Wine doesn't. For instance, Morrowind, Total Annihilation, and Locomotion, two fairly old game and one ancient, didn't work out of the box in Wine without fiddling. They worked great in Crossover.