Slashdot Mirror
Windows XP 64-Bit Customer Preview Program
MBCook writes "I just notice that Microsoft has a new Windows XP 64-Bit Customer Preview Program starting today (February 3rd). If you have a AMD Opteron or Athlon64, you can go to the download page to get your copy. It's a pre-release copy that will expire in 360 days (which probably means the final will be out by then). Now Intel just changed their 64-bit plans, and all of a sudden this appears. Speculate away!"
I wonder if a 64 bit OS will make any performance difference for the average desktop user. Since its not like any normal people have more than a gig of ram anyways. Is it possible that it could even slow down 32 bit apps?
If Intel can't stay compatible with AMD's lineup they could end up behind. That would certainly be a first for Intel.
Intel and Microsoft may or may not have a business deal to promote Intel's 64-bit processors. Microsoft wouldn't do this for AMD, because splitting the processor targets would cost Microsoft money. Developing for two processors is more expensive than developing for one. There's no need to delve into anti-corporate mumbo-jumbo to explain this one. It's simple economics, and probably good business from Bill Gates' point of view.
--Guns don't kill people, abortion clinics kill people.
I speculate in a couple days Microsoft will deny this release exists, as they suddenly pull it to give their old cartel partner a chance to catch up and save face.
Consider this:
Microsoft has an evaluation operating system for the Yamhill before Intel actually ships. That doesn't just look like they've been playing patty-cake, but that Intel is running to keep up with AMD. How embarrassing. What's Moore's Law got to say about this? "Every 2 years Intel will get a little further behind where they need to be, by an ever increasing margin until operating systems exists for processors they haven't even designed yet."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Micrososft is doing this to keep us distracted away from Linux until Longhorn comes out. Two years is a long time, so we can always expect bits and pieces of "neato" stuff in the meantime.
What?
Damn, I never get it straight. Is this software free as in speech or free as in beer? Since the software is only good for about a year, I'd guess this is free as in beer, because my beer has an expiration date too. But does that mean Linux is free as in speech because it doesn't have an expiry? Of course some really skunky beers don't either. Now, can you have free as in beer in a cathedral? All the cathedrals I've been too serve wine. So is this free Windows free as in wine?
See, it's this kind of thing that is holding up the adoption of Linux. It's too confusing.
char is 8-bit, nearly by definition
short is 16-bit
int is 32-bit (DOS and Xenix are not modern)
long is 32-bit on all Windows OSes
long is the same size as a pointer Linux, BSD, Mac
void* is the natural size for the machine
long long is 64-bit
So 32-bit Windows and 32-bit UNIX have the
same sizes a each other. 64-bit systems differ,
because Windows sets sizeof(long)==4 and a
UNIX system sets sizeof(long)==sizeof(void*).
$7.95?! That can't be right! Here in the US, 64 bits is $8.
After installing this release on my MSI K8T-Neo Board, I have no drivers for scanner, printer (LPT1 unsupported...), ISDN PCI Card, Wireless LAN card and many other things.
I spent nights searching and begging for drivers. Thank you Microsoft for bringing this truly Linux user feeling to the Windows platform.
I was very confused and kept going to this Mike Rowe guy's site instead. I tell ya. There oughta be a law.
Here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/64bit/e xtended/trial/default.mspx
Beta of course.
"TK-421, why aren't you at your post?"
On Win2K and higher, you can split out the file system browsing from the desktop instance of Explorer.exe. Run Explorer and select Tools->Folder Options->View->"Launch folder windows in a separate process". It uses a little more memory but prevents a slow device from slowing down the rest of the GUI.
You're right, though; Explorer blocks waiting for I/O way more often than it ought to. Most of the multithreading in GUIs is pretty good on Windows, so I'm not sure why Explorer tends to block on floppy I/O, network I/O, etc. Fortunately, it usually doesn't affect other running apps.
The last time I checked, NT is built on something called a "Hardware Abstraction Layer" that made it relatively painless to port NT from MIPS to x86 and then to PowerPC. (NT was designed on MIPS R4000 machines which themselves were completely designed internally by Microsoft. This effort was deemed necessary to keep the codebase free of x86-specific assumptions and optimizations since portability was a key NT goal.) The hardest part about getting your system to run on a new 64-bit platform is getting drivers to work; generally you need lots of support from hardware vendors to accomplish this feat. Getting the OS itself to compile is the easy part.
But I doubt seriously that Windows NT is "so optimized for the older 32bit platform." The kernel is clearly portable to other architectures, and was in fact developed FIRST on a non-x86 architecture with different properties (page size, Endian-ness, etc). This leads me to believe that it is emphatically not "optimized" specifically for 32-bit x86. If you have evidence otherwise, I would like to see it.
Much more mature? Perhaps you were unaware of Windows XP 64-bit Edition? Sure, it only runs on Itanium, but do you not honestly think that for Microsoft to have released it in early 2003 that they would probably have been working on it and testing it for at least a couple years prior to that? Also, from Microsoft's website, I notice that they have also implemented a 32-bit emulation layer for Itanium called "Windows On Windows 64" (WOW64) that lets the OS run 32-bit X86 code. Does Suse have this capability built-in?
The other issue which I pointed out earlier is the driver situation. You can't really call a product "much more mature" unless its drivers are more mature. I don't see a clear win either way at the moment.