What if.....

What if? You would be constantly waiting for 64bit programs and games to be released since 32bit games and apps are still flooding the market. The actual transition from 32 to 64bit is going to take a bit longer then the original 16 to 32bit swapover seen with the 95/98 era. NT was already 32bit at that time making things easier. For a second OS? Love the idea when I finally get the Ultimate edition. That was sold out before.
 
What if? You would be constantly waiting for 64bit programs and games to be released since 32bit games and apps are still flooding the market. The actual transition from 32 to 64bit is going to take a bit longer then the original 16 to 32bit swapover seen with the 95/98 era. NT was already 32bit at that time making things easier. For a second OS? Love the idea when I finally get the Ultimate edition. That was sold out before.
So?

You can still install 32-Bit apps on a 64-Bit OS.

You would have to be a fool to buy the 32-Bit version of Vista now, unless you only have a 32-Bit CPU. The reasons being that for one, you can only have up to 4GB of RAM (128GB of Vista x64), and when 64-Bit apps start coming out, you cant take advantage of what it offers with a 32-Bit OS.
 
if you buy the retail version of vista you will have the choice of installing 32bit or 64bit. atleast thats the optiong in the uk
 
With multiple drives used for both storage and multi osing here the option to run any OS from 2000 or newer 32 or 64bit is always open including a 64bit Linux distro. Preference and application are the two key words there. Backward compatilibity between 32 and 64bit is also limited to a certain extent much like going back from 32 to 16bit.

XP has been more versatile that way except with the use of a virtual machine or a program like Dosbox allowing an 8bit app to run on Vista. Just going from one 32bit version of Windows to a newer generally sees the loss of some programs/games not being able to run. As far as memory most will find a good 2gb or ram works quite well for both there unless running CAD or some other type of ram intensive graphics design or engineering softwares.
 
i ran 64 bit xp for a while, and was not happy;.

it'd be worth it if you NEEDED it

and if you NEEDED it, you'd know already
 
i ran 64 bit xp for a while, and was not happy;.

it'd be worth it if you NEEDED it

and if you NEEDED it, you'd know already

Thanks for the vote of confidence! I was thinking of running Pro 64bit here to replace the 32bit version since I can find it for like $50-$65 OEM lately. But I will eventually grab a 64bit version not for a primary but secondary OS for the time being. Unfortunately the main desktop apps here still require a 32bit version of XP.
 
ya, i mean it's just that simple

the 64-bit platform just plain isn't as user friendly and well-supported, so the only time it'd be worth the extra hassle is if you actually NEEDED the extra memory handling capabilities of the platform, in which case the move from 32 to 64 bit would be less of an 'option' and more of a necessity.

I mean, unless you're doing 3d rendering, and audio/video mixing/mastering/recording or studio work, there's really no need for the extra memory useage.

And with current processors, even the largest zipping/unzipping/encoding/splitting/combining and transcoding jobs are done in a reasonable amount of time, and the move to 64bit is only going to improve your performance marginally.

Not to mention, there isn't as much free-ware available in 64-bit, either. So aside from 7zip-64, you'll find yourself buying a lot more commercial software if you actually want 64-bit tools than you would have to with 32-bit.

Not to mention there's PITA quirks with the 64-bit windows.

For example, you'll need to be running both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of internet explorer, as the 64-bit version is incompatable with windows update, and any other authenticity-verifying microsoft pages.
 
Simply going from 32 to 64 doesn't mean a performance gain there. The concept is for a more stable and improved environment. The problem at this time was covered quite a bit there with the overall "lack of" everything for the average user. Just due to being able to run a few 32bit games or apps on a 64bit version won't far either. The image here shows an "8bit" old dos game running on the 32bit version of Vista by mounting a virtual dos drive.
dukeblastsrobotsn7.jpg
 
and i just looked it up, and even windows 1.0, released in 1985 was a 16-bit platform.

Windows 3.0 was 32-bit, and came out in 1990.

Duke nukem came out in 1991. It's definitely not 8-bit.
 
Two to one in favor of XP Pro with SP1 and 64 in 32bit mode seen there. But that's no different then seeing any gains between Pro and the Home edition in strictly 32bit since that comparison lacks. What I was referring to was the overall platform. A performance gain seen with only one game or app is not the basis for deciding which OS you will choose to run.

Microsoft and software companies alike have well fallen behind the fast changeovers seen in hardwares. You now see boards with 16gb capability for memory while the most commonly used OS is one version of a 32bit Windows. A real performance gain would be seen in a 64bit version of Linux since that OS doesn't come loaded with startup items even seen in XP 64bit which was what that article is based on not Vista.
 
and i just looked it up, and even windows 1.0, released in 1985 was a 16-bit platform.

Windows 3.0 was 32-bit, and came out in 1990.

Duke nukem came out in 1991. It's definitely not 8-bit.

In order to run the original version of Duke Nukem and the Nukem 2 sequel that followed you had to exit Windows first in order to run the old "strictly dos" versions until DosBox came out some time later for creating a virtual dos environment. Duke 2D and it's addons to come later where the 16bit versions that you could run on 95 and 98.

Windows 3.11 for Workgroups(16bit) later became NT which was 32bit. Windows 3.1 was 16bit rleased in 1992 with 95 following in 1995 seeing the OSR2 for 32bit support. 95PLUS! followed being the second 95 version. Microsoft actually announced 1.0 in 1983 to come out in 85 with the 2.0 version coming out in 1987. Before 95 you were looking at "Windows for Dos". You manually started Windows from a dos prompt while in the Windows directory at that time. 95 was the first with the auto startup feature in that progression of Fat based Windows there.

NT 3.1, 3.5, and 4.0 were based on a totally different kernal later to go further in 2000, Windows Server 2003 after XP, and now Vista. XP is what merged the home user type with the networking type OSs in some degree there. The best place to further this however is to look over the MS history found where? Why Microsoft of course. :P http://www.microsoft.com/windows/WinHistoryDesktop.mspx
 
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