Microsoft to Launch 64-bit Windows on Monday

maotx writes "Several news outlets are reporting that Microsoft will officially roll out 64-bit versions of its Windows operating systems on Monday. As compared with existing 32-bit versions: 64-bit Windows will handle 16 terabytes of virtual memory, as compared to 4 GB for 32-bit Windows. System cache size jumps from 1 GB to 1 TB, and paging-file size increases from 16 TB to 512 TB."

Comments

Are there any 32-bit-only OSes left worth mention?

[Shag]

Just wondering. Obviously Solaris, IRIX, Linux, AIX, Mac OS X and whatever other UNIX flavors are out there (well, except for maybe SCO...) have had 64-bit support for some number of years now.

Is Windows the last major commercial OS to add 64-bit support, or are there others I'm missing?

(Even if it is the last one, I'm sure Microsoft will tout this as supremely innovative. :)

Third party apps

[lavaforge]

I've been messing around with Ubuntu for x86-64 lately and while it is pretty snappy, I miss things a lot of the little things (like the flash plugin) that were never compiled for a 64 bit system.

Is Microsoft going to have a similar problem, in that it has a nice OS, but few apps to run on it?

Re:Are there any 32-bit-only OSes left worth menti

[Dancin_Santa]

Microsoft also provided 64-bit Windows NT for Sparc. However, this is their up-to-date operating system ported to a 64-bit arch.

Pricing?

[TomHandy]

I have an Athlon 64 system I built, and I'm currently running regular Windows XP Home (which I had a license for from a previous computer, and didn't feel like buying XP Pro). One thing I haven't seen yet is what the costs will be of this x64 version of Windows XP. Will it be a free upgrade? If not, any idea on what it's going to cost? One reason I never tried out the pre-release version of x64 is that it seemed to require an XP Pro key, which I didn't have.

Re:Why?

[interstellar_donkey]

Why?

Because it's a logical step in the advancement of computers.

I can remember a good 17 years ago debating with a "computer expert" about hard drives. He said that nobody would ever need anything bigger then a one megabyte HDD. I still think about that and smile.

Back then, nobody could predict the way computers would shape our lives. Now, of course, we know.

Small steps in the advancement of hardware and software typically don't revolutionize our use of computers, but putting them all together has a dramatic effect. So we've started a shift towards 64 bit. We've got the hardware, and now we're getting the software. Yes, at first it won't be a big deal to the end users, but that leap will ultimately give us more power and flexibility to do more advanced things.

We've got a lot more we can do with computers, and not just with games. Parsing human speech into text, for example, is currently pretty bad. Being able to recognize features in an image is rudimentary at best. No, a 64 bit OS won't change that, but it will lead to a better hardware and software base to make it easier for developers to approach those goals.

Moving to 64 bit is not being done "just because", it's being done as a step in the continued evolution of computing technology, which leads to better advances down the road.