Harrison
20th February 2007, 13:21
It has struck me as quite odd that 64-bit computing is not being pushed much.
Look at the current state of play. All Athlon 64's, Intel Core and a lot of the later Pentium 4 range are all 64 bit CPUs. And yet what OS is used on most of them? Either the 32-bit XP or the 32-bit Vista. Why?
I really though that, with the release of Vista, both the hardware manufacturers and Microsoft would want to push the move to full 64-bit computing as it is the ideal time and opportunity to do so.
But look at the problems if you were to buy the 64-bit version of Vista. Hardly any hardware driver support and dire graphics card driver development. Hardly any software has yet to be ported to 64-bit, even though the 64 bit version of XP has been available for a long time now.
Is the just me, or does it seem odd to everyone else too?
Sure, moving to 64-bit would mean a lot of current PC software might stop working or have a lot of problems, but that happens with all moves to new technology. Look at the problems when Apple moved from PowerPC to Intel, or even when they moved the OS9 to OSX.
And why now do what Apple did and just have XP installed alongside the 64-bit version of Vista for backwards compatibility. It would work very well. And would be great if they integrated this support into Vista as they did for the OSX classic mode.
This is definitely one area the Apple have managed to get right compared to Microsoft. Apple finally made the complete switch to 64-bit support with the release of Tiger (10.3) so why can't Microsoft? Could it be because they actually have a userbase and need to still support so many 32-bit end users!
At the moment, if you really wanted to get the most out of your 64-bit CPU you would need to opt for Linux and the 64-bit Distros and 64-bit compiled software. This shows such a huge advantage to using open source OS's and software, because it can easily be compiled for any distro or version.
Do you think we will see a move to 64-bit any time soon? What was really the point of the 64-bit processors if we don't!
Look at the current state of play. All Athlon 64's, Intel Core and a lot of the later Pentium 4 range are all 64 bit CPUs. And yet what OS is used on most of them? Either the 32-bit XP or the 32-bit Vista. Why?
I really though that, with the release of Vista, both the hardware manufacturers and Microsoft would want to push the move to full 64-bit computing as it is the ideal time and opportunity to do so.
But look at the problems if you were to buy the 64-bit version of Vista. Hardly any hardware driver support and dire graphics card driver development. Hardly any software has yet to be ported to 64-bit, even though the 64 bit version of XP has been available for a long time now.
Is the just me, or does it seem odd to everyone else too?
Sure, moving to 64-bit would mean a lot of current PC software might stop working or have a lot of problems, but that happens with all moves to new technology. Look at the problems when Apple moved from PowerPC to Intel, or even when they moved the OS9 to OSX.
And why now do what Apple did and just have XP installed alongside the 64-bit version of Vista for backwards compatibility. It would work very well. And would be great if they integrated this support into Vista as they did for the OSX classic mode.
This is definitely one area the Apple have managed to get right compared to Microsoft. Apple finally made the complete switch to 64-bit support with the release of Tiger (10.3) so why can't Microsoft? Could it be because they actually have a userbase and need to still support so many 32-bit end users!
At the moment, if you really wanted to get the most out of your 64-bit CPU you would need to opt for Linux and the 64-bit Distros and 64-bit compiled software. This shows such a huge advantage to using open source OS's and software, because it can easily be compiled for any distro or version.
Do you think we will see a move to 64-bit any time soon? What was really the point of the 64-bit processors if we don't!