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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."
seems nice, fast, haven't had any BSOD. The only problem, not many 32 bit apps run for me. You MUST run IE, WMP, etc. Windows 64
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
With kernel 2.6.11 I had no problem malloc()'ing 2^47 bytes (128TB) ! Memory overcommitting is on, of course. While it seems like an unneeded feature now, remember that W$ limitation means you cannot mmap() stuff >16TB, and this will be a painful limitation in a year or two (1TB IDE disks will soon be launched, I heard).
In addition, I was _really_ surprised to see that Intel's compiler still keeps "long" to 4 bytes on windows (didn't check, but so says their doc). With NO standard integer type for 64 bit, programming is set to be no fun on x86_64 under windows.
Can you give us a link, please?
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
It's this kind of childish fanboyism that's keeping many people from trying Linux out.
Linux has it's reasons and uses, so does Windows. The secret is choosing the right tool for your job, according to your skills, patience and time. Linux can be a better tool for some (I use it at home and at work, after I convinced my boss it was ok to let me use it if I didn't lose any productivity), but for everybody. Flaming these people calling them losers is not going to win any of them to your cause, let alone leave them a positive impression about you and the operative system you're promoting. For this reason, your behaviour is more damaging to Linux than the propaganda you normally get from Microsoft.
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
Will they dear to offend the EU commisioner?
Yes, expect constant salvos from MS in the next two to three weeks, they'll do all kinds of crazy shit to stay in the news and to steal attention from the launch of Tiger-- this week, in the run-up to release day, and for the next week or two after, as people get their feet wet and those not privy to advance copies start posting reviews.
The big reason for going to 64-bit Windows has nothing to do with the word size. The main reason is that AMD64 has shed another chunk of the 8086 instruction set legacy. The IA32 has 8 32-bit general purpose registers, about the same total register storage as the Cosmac 1802... a 4/8 bit microprocessor from the '70s. AMD64 gives you 16 64-bit registers, which is pretty small for a 64-bit machine (Alpha and Power have 32) but big enough to give the compiler room to work in, especially since it's also doubling the number of SSE registers.
Here's some other computers for comparison:
PDP-11, late '60s... 8 16-bit general purpose registers.
VAX, '70s... 16 32-bit GPRs.
68000, ~'80... 8 32-bit GPRs, 8 32-bit index registers.
z8000, ~'80... 16 16-bit registers.
8086, late '70s, 8 16-bit GPRs.
MIPS, '80s, 32 32-bit registers.
SPARC, ~'90... 32 32-bit GPRs, but only 8 were really usable as GPRs for the optimiser. Thus has hurt the Sparc's performance.
Power PC, '90s, 32 32 or 64-bit GPRs
Alpha, '90s, 32 64-bit registers
I would say the 4x register-file space increase is going to be far more important than the larger virtual memory.
It's also not like we had 3.8Ghz 32 bit processors with 4GB of RAM and 400GB drives when the first 32 bit versions of Windows showed up circa 1995. Heck, the Win95 requirements could be satisfied with a 386 and math coprocessor, 8MB of RAM and 30MB of hard drive space. The upper limits of 32 bit computing sounded just about as high back then.
When you release a completely new platform, it had BETTER have some room for technology that doesn't exist right now.
The typical 486 or 1st generation Pentium was running at a clock speed less than 1% of the 64 bit procesors of today, 16MB of RAM similar, etc.
Those numbers put these ceilings pretty easily in range and possibly too conservative.
Sometimes you have to plan for really big numbers. I'm not thrilled with what cars, food, etc. are going to cost (with nothing more than normal inflation) in 35 years when I'm 65, but that doesn't change the fact that I should really plan for about 4 million in assets to completely retire at that age. Saying that $125,000 will be a modest salary equivalent to $45,000 this year matches up pretty well.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Activation requires a really annoying call (I have to call to INSTALL an operating system?).
I've made several in my time.
I've done upgrades on hardware for people who HAVE got XP on there (came with the machine), and it's a case of reading a whole bunch of numbers down the phone at them. Anything goes wrong, and you can end up making the same call all over again.
So, to me, the call was neither short, nor painless.
It was irritating and pointless.
I happily pay for any software I use (and although I use Linux heavily, I like having windows as a backup OS for when Linux can't do something).
I have no 'cracked' software.
I just refuse to have that constraint placed on me that I'm at the mercy of Microsoft every time I want to install an OS.