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64-Bit Windows Releases Now Available
SimplyJeff writes "Athlon 64 users rejoice! Today at WinHEC 2005 in Seattle, Microsoft announced availability of the 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Strangely (and possibly a sign the drivers aren't yet up to snuff), Microsoft will not sell the 64-bit releases in retail outlets. For now, only new PC buys can get Windows x64 Edition as an option. However, those who purchased Windows XP after March 31, 2003, can trade in their copy for the 64-bit version at a cost of $12 and a voided warranty. Although, x64 users will get one free support call to Microsoft." Reader bonch adds a link to CNET's review of the OS.
The bad news... if you bought XP before April '03 you have to buy it again at full price. The good news... you won't ever have to buy another OS because 64-bits should be enough for anyone.
My apologies to this guy.
So whens intel coming out with 64 bit x86 chips ? Will they also be dual core ?
Great, now all people need are some applications really designed to take advantage of it....
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Why the hell don't they just label it public beta, since it seems they want no one but a very select few to use it. This is more like a beta test then a product release ...
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Yes! Now I can run 64bit on an OS I never wanted to use in the first place!
Athlon 64 users rejoice! Today at WinHEC 2005 in Seattle, Microsoft announced availability of the 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
...nuff said.
How long before they hits the Warez, Is it me or does it seem like M$ is just shooting themselves in the foot by not selling it retail since many will seek "other" ways of obtaining the product?
From the summary:
Although, x64 users will get one free support call to Microsoft.
What on earth does that mean? Does a call to MS support cost so much that one free call is worth mentioning in the summary?
Or do they know that anyone using W64 will need to call MS support, or what?
"Athlon 64 users rejoice!"
Why? A day late and a dollar short, I say!
Its pretty sad when a commercial OS ships a debugger with their system but no compiler.
If you have a 64-bit processor, here is your OS. I know people are going to get on here and talk about Linux supporting 64-bit a while ago and such, but this is Windows. They have moved to 64-bit. That means, us designers who like to use Photoshop or just play games (that don't run on linux that is) can finally put our 64-bit processor to some good use.
There is still going to be the lack of 64-bit programs for a while, but it's a start.
And in my opinion, the $12 trade sounds like a nice deal.
Cheers
P.S. No, I am not a Linux hater or w/e. I like linux, I like windows. I just use them for what each does best.
or is it psuedo64 like OSX?
What on earth does that mean?
;)
It means just what it says.
Does a call to MS support cost so much that one free call is worth mentioning in the summary?
Read the sentence which is before the one you quoted.
Or do they know that anyone using W64 will need to call MS support, or what?
Not necessarily
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Could be... :)
but it is also conveniently about 18 months since x86_64 linux distributions began appearing; so it could also just be laziness and/or incompetence
I think this is a good step forward. The actual performance improvements will likely be quite marginal until there are native 64-bit applications. Currently Windows XP and 2003 64-bit editions run 32-bit applications perfectly, but under an emulation layer called WoW (no not World of Warcraft, but Windows on Windows).
I'm not sure how many people remember this, but back when Digital Equipment Corporation's famed Alpha processor was "supported" by Windows NT, the 64-bit environment was infact not much more than a cheap hack. Microsoft designed Windows NT to not actually execute 64-bit instructions, but 32-bit instructions in parallel. I'm glad to see Microsoft is doing a better job supporting the AMD and Intel 64-bit processor lines.shop.envescent.com - Computer hardware and more.
...Beelzebub just bought himself a snowblower.
What's up with the link?
Interesting that the cell that has the content says "Content Starts Here". Placeholder text I DOUBT m$ would miss.
Faux Site perhaps?!
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
Solitaire in 64-Bit goodness!
And in my opinion, the $12 trade sounds like a nice deal.
The $12 trade in deal is only valid if you purchased a PC with WinXP preinstalled. If you built your own system and installed a retail WinXP the offer doesn't apply.
Can I just upgrade from Windows XP 32-bit to 64-bit, just like I upgrade from 2000 to XP? Also, will 64 break most/all of my 32 bit apps?
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My question is how Microsoft will handle dual core processors?
My dream workstation would include dual processor, dual core Opterons. Will Microsoft charge me more for Windows XP Professional that supports 4 processors even though it's achieved by dual core technology?
But since all 64 bit programs must be reengineered anyway (ranging from a simple recompile to a partial rewrite depending on the code), is NX on by default for 64 bit programs (an off for Windows On Windows 32 (the layer that runs Win32 programs on Win64))? Seems like the opportune time to make that switch.
If companies can get drivers out soon for it, should be a relativly nice OS. Of course since this is just a different architecture in many ways this is less than a service pack (since nothing has changed featurewise except under the hood). Comparing it to Tiger wouldn't really be fair for that reason.
But going forward, it should be interesting to see performance differences as drivers mature. I'd love to see a performance comparaison in 6 months or so when things should be relativly good. And now that Windows is out, we should see more 64-bit programs which means better benchmarks for the difference between 32 and 64 bits in everyday tasks. The last big excuse for avoid 64 bits is gone (first it was processors, but AMD and Intel both sell 'em now, then it was Windows, but MS sells THAT now, what's left?).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
http://www.hoovers.com/zomax-incorporated/--ID__51 171--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml
Zomax mostly serves customers in the computer hardware manufacturing and software publishing industries. It provides replication, telemarketing, and fulfillment services to software giant Microsoft, which accounts for about 22% of the company's sales. Another 19% come from Dell. Zomax operates through facilities in North America and Europe.
Seems legit, although aren't they breaking the law by not supplying a legitimate phone number? My registrar send me ominous messages about once a year about how I am LEGALLY REQUIRED TO KEEP MY CONTACT INFO UP TO DATE, blah blah blah....
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
That a major vendor will release an important piece of software on some future date is newsworthy.
That Microsoft actually shipped something when they said they would is also newsworthy.
I was under the impression that amd64 chips are called x86_64 and not x64. Anyways, what good will a 64bit OS do to me if most of the apps for it are still 32bit?
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
don't ms oem licenses force the oem to take the entire support burden?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
While this might be perfectly normal and legitimate for an error, why does it remind me of back when Microsoft used to introduce such incompatibilities (like the above warning) simply to scare people off from using the products of their competitors?
Granted, that was in the Win 3.1 days or earlier, but I seem to remember some pretty damning evidence of such conduct brought out when Microsoft was sued over such things...
the original 8086 was a 16 bit cpu. The 8088 which was a cut down version used in the early pcs only had an 8 bit external bus but it still had a 16 bit core and instruction set.
the dropping of support for win16 is going to be a pita though. Hopefully we will see some third party soloution to let us keep running tetris,rattlerrace etc
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
See MS link to it here.
the problem is that, if you go to that link, it gives you the impression that you're at microsoft.com (the site theme rips off microsoft.com blatantly).
what's scary is that the submitter also made it sound like the link would go to MS site as well...so be warned.
If they void the warranty, that must mean that the EULA is also null and void right?
Athlon 64 users rejoice! Today at WinHEC 2005 in Seattle, Microsoft announced availability of the 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
You spout off about the joys of linux. But,when Microsoft comes crawling with a 64-bit OS, you fall over like a bitch in heat. Sadness
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
It's like they ran Solitare on Win95 and XP and since they saw no difference, XP is clearly no better.
Watch Bill's keynote. He doesn't claim random desktop bench marks will run faster.
He does state that for very specific scenarios (where you need lots of memory) like Active Directory and SQL, x64 is a huge improvement...with numbers to back it up.
A speech...
The test of newsworthiness is an event. Here, we essentially have two stories of the SAME event, one day apart. Slashdot might as well just give them free banner advertising while they're at it.
http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?ln=e %20n-us&x=5&y=3&gprid=6794&
MS "advanced" support can cost $245 a call, for those who aren't aware of the cost M$ support. So, the answer is: "yes it is expensive enough to be worth mentioning." "Read the previous sentence" is the wrong answer!
yeah, I'm sure that "free phone call" will go well used. How much would they charge past that?
http://www.6765656b.com it's the ~ for us geek's.
From MS's site:
In order to be eligible to receive Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition, your computer must have been ordered between March 31, 2003 and July 31, 2005 with Microsoft Windows® XP Pro (32 Bit) preinstalled.
So, it seems from that, if your computer came preinstalled with Windows XP Home Edition (like me), you're out of luck.
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
does it run linux?
This was never considered by microsoft to be a retail offering. It was always planned to be an OEM release only for sale with a new computer. You will almost certainly be able to buy a copy at newegg with the purchase of a critical piece of computer hardware (for instance a power cable).
You won't find this on Slashdot, but seeing how people love to pick on Windows security, I thought to let you know about this;
http://www.tuaw.com/2005/04/25/mac-trojan/
Yesterday (even before OS X Tiger was released) the first Trojan for Tiger appeared.
Sophos is listing a new Mac Trojan, dubbed Mac/Cowhand-A, which lets other people gain control of your Mac: "Mac/Cowhand-A is a proxy Trojan for the Mac OSX platform. The Trojan may copy itself to the user's Preferences folder. In order to run itself on startup, the Trojan may add itself to the user's Startup Items."
If it was sold in a box in stores, people who don't know what it is might pick it up and try to install it. Very few people have 64-bit processors - certainly the average consumer who buys software from a retailer does not. This way they can control it: you only get the 64-bit version of Windows if you actually have a 64-bit processor.
The poster implied their reason was lack of support. I think it's lack of interest.
Microsoft already had a 64bit Windows running on DEC/Compaq Alpha. Why in the hell did it take so long for this release? The whole point of having HAL was portability.
r l= /library/en-us/win64/win64/wow64_implementation_de tails.asp
What the heck did they do to Windows to make the port take so long? AMD64 support should have taken a year at most. And why in the Hell do I still have to thunk down to 32bits (Go lookup 64bit Windows and thunking)? Not that I need it, but I'm just curious.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?u
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Now that it has been released, what 64-bit compilers are available for the operating system? The last time I looked, Microsoft was planning to use an ugly data model (LLP64) where only "long long" variables and pointers would be 64-bits. To me, that's a chicken-shit decision, broken code should be fixed or rewritten, not accommodated by crippling the compiler.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
: those who purchased Windows XP after
: March 31, 2003, can trade in their copy
: for the 64-bit version at a cost of $12
: and a voided warranty.
Voided warranty? Blimey! This system is dangerous, and Microsoft knows it!
Circumcision is child abuse.
this could be part of MS's strategy. They have bullied software vendors into rewriting software before, not to mention "motivating" customers to upgrade. Of course their own apps will be compatible. Remember the OS has never been very profitable, the major profits come from the applications.
There's an option in the Athlon64 that's called Buffer Overflow Protection I think? Anyway, if I remember right, having 64-bit Windows allows this opiton to be enabled. That would provide some additional security. I'm not sure of its effectiveness, though.
*IF* they can get enough drivers. I decided to get the public beta of XP64 and I can say it was one of the stupidest decisions I have ever made in my life. I wanted to get a free OS and rather than steal XP (it is needed for certain things unfortunately) I decided I would go the legal route and take the free beta. What a mistake. Half of my programs do not work, as they whine about DLLs, missing libraries or just an OS that isnt the right kind. If you get any performance benefit from running in XP64 it is all lost BECAUSE NOTHING WORKS!! Don't buy the PR crap about 32 bit program compatability, it is as good as trying to use WINE(or whatever they decided to change the name to, I really don't care) to emulate windows. It works with about two programs, but if you step outside the box, you get slammed for even thinking of using a non standard application. Now, take the driver situation. The drivers are terrible, as until recently my computer stopped consistenly BSODing when I ran a necessary application and other programs are constantly locking up. Also, please take note that such devices most of us feel are necessities(god forbid a printer) will be completely unsupported and you will find yourself completely screwed over in every way. In short, unless you really need more than 4 gigabytes of RAM (the server edition maybe be better, I don't know) stay away from this. If I violated any EULAs, well, I don't give a crap, thank you for wasting an entire month of my life while I built mediocre solutions for my problem of an OS that cannot be explained without comparing it to goatse man, tubgirl and whatever other perversions the internet to has to offer. Truly this devil spawn of an OS is the worst product Microsoft has ever released.
Mod Wisely.
Why are operating systems which need security from buffer overflows still written in insecure languages such as C or C++ ?
I understand the most secure OS is openVMS and was coded in vaxassembler and had each line of code scrutinized for bufferoverflow errors, so I guess C could be secure if used right.
But wouldn't a language with garbage collection like oberon,java,ada or python be great for secure operating systems ?
Example. BlueBottle OS Ada OS.
...it runs Virtual PC, or some other similar emulator or virtualizer. Don't know how they'd run on 64-bit Windows, but if they work nice on the x86 I bet the Windows guys want it to run here--people do complain when their devices don't work after an upgrade, last I checked. I doubt Microsoft wants more articles written about that (remember a little OS called Windows 2000?).
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I started a new job about a couple years ago. Didn't take me long to notice the following line all over:
struct devive_info = (struct device_info *)a_ulDeviceHandle.
I told the chief programer we need to fix this fast as 64 bits are coming, and was told not to worry about it.
For those who can't read hungarian, this function was passed in a parameter as a int, and it was promptly cast (old style C cast too) to a pointer. This works on 32 bit platforms (normally), but will never work on 64 bit platforms.
This is the guy who decided that since GCC is a terrible C++ compiler (it is, but we were still using compilers from 1995 for the windows stuff, and working around bugs in it), he would standardize on Gcc 2.95 even though gcc 3 is much better. I never did figure out that logic. (this was a decision made late last year) Sometimes I'm glad he doesn't work there anymore.
Not that it matters much to me, I'm a UNIX guy. The last version of Windows I ever had on my machines was 3.1, and I installed OS/2 as soon as it arrived.
It is true that the ms page links to productorder.com
Wrong. See here:
/. story.
If you built your PC yourself [snip] the link to the right.
The link to the right being the same link given in the
Funny. When you click that link on the right (or the one in the slashdot summary) you're taken to a page that says otherwise:
Technology Advancement Program Eligibility
In order to be eligible to receive Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition, your computer must have been ordered between March 31, 2003 and July 31, 2005 with Microsoft Windows® XP Pro (32 Bit) preinstalled. (Emphasis mine)
In addition, you must read and agree to the following:
Right now, I click the link but can't agree to the terms on their form, so 64bit for $12 is impossible for me--I installed WinXP on my own from a copy I bought from NewEgg. Maybe it's a catch-22, or maybe the webdev team just screwed up. I sure hope it's the second and your right.
Mod parent down -1, Stupid
If you're a C programmer, and have mod points, you have to mod the parent up.
Windows is:
a 32 bit extension and a graphical shell for
a 16 bit patch to
an 8 bit operating system originally coded for
a 4 bit microprocessor, written by
a 2 bit company, that can't stand
1 bit of competition.
My only (very lame) suggestion is:
"a 64 bit recompilation of"
Other suggestions are welcome.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Registrant: ZOMAX INC. (PRODUCTORDER-DOM) 2727 Systron Drive Concord, CA 94518 US Domain Name: PRODUCTORDER.COM Administrative Contact, Technical Contact: Watson, Carl (CW2954) watsonc@WEST.ZOMAX.COM Zomax, Inc. 2727 SYSTRON DR CONCORD, CA 94518-1355 US (510) 492-2301 fax: (925) 686-0290 Record expires on 22-Apr-2012. Record created on 21-Apr-1997. Database last updated on 25-Apr-2005 23:08:14 EDT.
64 bits will allow you to post faster, so you don't fail at a first post.
I remember Far Cry was supposed to have 64-bit version. Are those currently out and working for Windows XP 64-bit?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
With correct formatting this time ...
Registrant:
ZOMAX INC. (PRODUCTORDER-DOM)
2727 Systron Drive
Concord, CA 94518
US
Domain Name: PRODUCTORDER.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Watson, Carl (CW2954) watsonc@WEST.ZOMAX.COM
Zomax, Inc.
2727 SYSTRON DR
CONCORD, CA 94518-1355
US
(510) 492-2301 fax: (925) 686-0290
Record expires on 22-Apr-2012.
Record created on 21-Apr-1997.
Database last updated on 25-Apr-2005 23:08:14 EDT.
Is it possible to get an "evaluation version" from somewhere?
I can't wait until they get their first 64-bit virus!
I have been using Windows XP and I am very annoyed with how it manages to get viruses as soon as you have finished with the virus scanner. You finish the scan and 10 minutes on the net later you shut down the browser and scan the machine again and you have more spyware and trojans on it. And the stupidity of the users who install the stupid browser addons and toolbars that carry trojan horses and other bullshit. The main reason for Windows being infected with all this crap is the stupidty of the users who use it. They really should fix the bugs in the OS's first.
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
from: https://microsoft.productorder.com/clientx64/defa
(my emphasis)
does that mean
a) Microsoft changed their mind about dual core on the OS recently
or
b) There's a 4 - proc version of XP Pro that i haven't heard of.
?
I had been working under the assumption that XP Pro supported up to two processors, even if they are dual - core, but that for 4 processor support, you had to go with Server, which i don't want to use for a workstation because of the deprioritised performance quanta which are tedius to say the least to readjust (quanta determine priority of foreground apps, so background priority is fine if you are batching almost everything or acting as a server, but not so good if you want to throw everything at a real - time render or a vast photoshop file).
So asks I, as i now head off to Google for 4 way Opterons with dual 16 lane PCI-e so I can have *eight cores* on my desktop!
but seriously, that was a real question. I have neve heard of a specific 4-proc XP Pro edition. Anyone?
cheers!
-
ZOMAX is fine.1 171--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml
From this article: http://www.hoovers.com/zomax-incorporated/--ID__5
"Zomax is a supply chain management company that provides services such as order processing; printing and packaging; CD and DVD manufacturing; assembly and distribution; and returned-merchandise authorization. Zomax mostly serves customers in the computer hardware manufacturing and software publishing industries. It provides replication, telemarketing, and fulfillment services to software giant Microsoft, which accounts for about 22% of the company's sales. Another 19% come from Dell. Zomax operates through facilities in North America and Europe."
Today, along with this announce, were announced at least a 64 bit versions for NewTek's LiwghtWave and Avid's Softimage, both aplication very hungry on resources.
You means windows comes with a warrenty???
does it now crash twice as fast or twice as often?
or perhaps both?
forget this win-doh's crap, go get suse linux 64bit.
now I can have the fastest blue screen in the west.
/. instructions for using a link: 1. look at name/address in the link 2. do a whois to see if the registation info is correct 3. traceroute 4. ping 5. nmap full the scan 7. do it over again to verify the previous findings 6. click on link
Yes Microsoft, thats right, three days until Tiger ;)
My experience with Windows 98 and Windows XP leads me to believe that the first release version of a Microsoft OS is what Microsoft calls SP2.
"Our beta test site is the whole world."
They're going to need a lot more than that...
If they called it a Public Beta, they wouldn't be able to claim they shipped XP/64 before Apple ships Tiger on Friday. The fact that they are throttling the availability by limiting it to OEMs and people with a pre-installed copy of XP Pro indicates (to me at least) that they really don't have a full production ramp-up yet.
Of course, nobody's going to remember this attempt at 3-day one-upsmanship in the long run, because Tiger's retail availability and the lifting of the NDA surrounding it is going to drown out the select few people waiting for their copies of XP/64 to be delivered. Not to mention the new eye-candy and search features Tiger has, while XP/64 is very much an under-the-hood upgrade.
I might be overly cynical, however...
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/64-bits/index .x?pg=1
7. find a new ISP because they reported you port scanning them
8. ???
9. Profit!
In California, you pay the testers.
In Redmond, WA, the testers pay you!
This is a return to 64 bit chips.
As opposed to the two-bit versions they have been selling for years?
Fat chicks need love, too. But they gotta pay. - Quagmire
-"Hello, Support center? My PC is dead!"
-"Reboot."
-"Done. Doesn't work any more."
-"This is the end of the free call. For more, insert credit in slot and press any key!"
BSOD show up in half the time as before!
Thanks Bill.
(And somehow that asshat Paul Thurrot will make this seem like a good feature...)
Wow except that microsoft.com links to them, no wait . . they must of hacked microsofts site to point to them.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
All we need are 64-bit viruses. Thanks but no, thanks, Microsoft. I've had enough of all the Windows trouble and I am a happy Linux user now.
I have 8 computers in my house at the moment - only 1 is a name-brand (Toshiba laptop). Five are are white-box (2 are OEM from a client - putting some Qt stuff on their Linux boxes). White-box is the way to go if you know what you are doing. You get what you want, and know what you have.
Anyhow, I suspect the "no support" clause in the original article is not the same as "no warranty" - I am guessing that if something actually broke under warranty they would still have to honor it. How can you argue that one OS or another burned up your power supply or made your 5$ Win-modem croak.
OT: In the 20+ years I have been running white-box computers, the only thing that EVER broke on me was a 30GB Maxtor HDD about 3 years ago, and even that was nice enough to let me get one more backup off it. (Not counting cheapo fans that get really noisy and give fair warning before they die.)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
You can pimp Linux all you like, most people care about Windows and what it runs on. For a long time, the only 64-bit Windows was IA-64. GRanted no one used it, but still. However now MS has discontinued all IA-64 support for workstation, and gone with x86-64, and it's going mainstream. That effectively means the format war is decided. Intel may continue to make IA-64 chips, but they'll never be mainstream since Windows doesn't use them.
No.
Longer answer: Hell no.
Even longer answer: Think about how much of the kernel is tuned for speed or collisions and how much control one needs when dealing with the timeframes involved with something as huge and as fast as a kernel. You don't want garbage collection, it is one place where manual is a good thing.
I saw these being sold all over Akihabara this past weekend... This guy confirms, and they seem legit. Anybody know what's up with this?
Look, if Windows doesn't go x86-64, that'll severly hurt the future sales of 64-bit processors. Like it or no, most of the world uses Windows and shows no signs of switching soon.
So 64-bit support is good all around, now users are going to start migratiing. It'll be slow at first, but it'll keep happening. Pretty soon, you just won't get non-64-bit systems. At that point, AMD and Intel will be able to start removing a lot of the legacy support and optimizing for 64-bit.
Same thing happened with 16/32-bit. Intel processors went 32-bit with the 386, but DOS/Windows lagged. Because of this, they continued to be optimized for 16-bit code. Finally, with the Pentium Pro, that was broken. It blew at 16-bit code but screamed with 32-bit. It recieved a fair bit of flack since many apps were still 16-bit, so the Pentium MMX ran them better.
However not too long from then, most apps were 32-bit, and the PII came out, based on the PPro core, thus 32-bit optimized. It was a nice n' zippy chip for msot apps people ran.
So this is good, regardless of what platform you run. It means that the 64-bit desktop revolution is now going to start in earnest. I imagine in 4-6 years, 32-bit machines will be rather rare and looked at as relics of a sort.
Sure, let me know when you can write code in Python to fiddle the bits in a page map, or execute the instructions to save/restore the SSE registers. Oh, you have to write those in assembler? Well, poot. What, the Python interpreter is written in C? Well, damn. What, you say, I need to embed the assembly in C? Well, shiznit, I guess I didn't get very much out of that after all.
That's basically why. While operating systems have been written in higher level languages, at least in part, they haven't been done so very successfully. Just think how hard it is to write any operating system, and then look at how many successful operating systems have been written in languages other than C or its derivatives.
Anyone? ;)
"Hey that's my luggage combination!"
Funny, you don't sound Druish.
"Derp de derp."
I have a program that announces incoming emails and IM with text-to-speech. It told me
"Microsoft: let the 64 bit error begin"
Oh, I mis-heard. It said era, not error, but it gave me a good laugh.
-- All your bass are below two Hz
For years and years, MS has struggled with shoty hardware vendors who write crap HW drivers. Hence the number for BSoDs in Win9x and NT 4. So, to help solve this problem they came up with a hardware and driver certification program http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/GetStart/design.mspx . That's why you see those cute little sticks that say "Designed for Windows XP".
So they come out with XP64 and don't sell it retail. I think this was VERY smart on their part. Think about it. You have a VERY small percentage of people who actually have a 64bit PC. Out of that percentage I bet an even smaller number were actually purchased via an OEM channel (i.e. not a custom built machine) besides servers. So the remainder of 64bit PCs are custom made with a hodge podge of different hardware manufactures who may, or may not, have certified their hardware and DRVIERS through MS's cert program. My hunch is that a lot of the major HW manufactures are on board, buy Kim Jung Wong, and all his buddies, from Twain might not be yet.
This strategy, in my mind, helps ensure that Microsoft provides a solid x64 platform for the time being. They only thing that bothers me is that the true "enthusiasts" are kinda left in the dark with their custom, neon glowing, power bill pumping, heat generating glory 64bit processing beast if a machine.
"It's not rocket science, Smithers! It's only brain surgery!" --Mr. Burns
Eat this Lienooks users
n g.org
http://www.qbang.org/index.asp
OK. Maybe it his been 64 bit Linux for _over a year_.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.qba
From the sounds of it, the driver "support" still sucks and
this is probably why it is still beta.
heh... liberal bias
You do not want Cocoa to be 64-bit, because then you're slinging 64-bit pointers to buttons around the bus and now you can only fit half as many of them in the cache.
The decision makes sense, but it is annoying to program. Where people want 64-bits, like in the ACTUAL PROCESSING, it is available. Where people care about speed, like a responsive interface, it is not available.
If you have a suitable machine you can grab kanotix 64 and try out a full 64 bit OS from a cd, and install it if you want to! Unlimited support incidents come from the simple link to the Kanotix irc channel from the desktop or a quick trip to the forum. Donations go by Paypal to "donate the_@_here kanotix.com" so know you know what to do with your $12!
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Just means that they will release this version with bugs. So now your are stuck with a computer, riddled with bugs and you dont want to format your drive again... So then microsoft can control how things play out. Starting to charge for updates seems like something they could start it with. Corner ya then make ya pay. who knows.... almost reminds me of win95 and how version "A" did not support usb so u had to buy or upgrade to version "B" to use usb. Money, money, money...
Hopefully the 64-bit versions of various multimedia codecs will become available as part of the system; it's a bit sucky to have to use a 32-bit environment just to run Mplayer and friends on my Linux-AMD64 system...
I hope that they have a policy whereby they can't hang up on you.
Mmmmm... 64-bit blue screen of death... aaagghgaghhh.... Delicious.
Hopefully, the 32bit flash plugin for internet explorer won't work, so macrodobe has a good reason to start working on a 64bit version... that will probably ease the step towards a 64bit linux plugin as well.
can I play goldeneye then?
Isnt this "no retail"-strategy exactly what will make people warez Windows XP64 even more?
Lets face it, many people already have bought Athlon 64-systems, or want to build them themselves. Those people CANT get Windows XP64 on their machines legally, if I understand this correctly.
Of course people could get an MSDN-subscription...
Why force people into warez?
Why justifying warez?
Why not sell it when people want it?
Most people wont buy a Dell just to get XP64 for their home-built system.
There are many ways to skin the cat.
The reason Microsoft chose LLP64 to ensure transparent portability between 32 and 64 bit compiles of Win32 apps. That was the most important consideration in their mind. I wouldn't call Microsoft's choice "stupid", but practical. There are very few applications for a 64 bit integer - it would just be wasted space most often, and it complicates portability between 32 and 64 bit compiles.
The reasons the Unix crowd went LP64 (sizeof(long) == 8) is they felt LLP64 requires extensive modifications to existing specifications to support those places which should naturally become 64-bit wide. In other words, they wanted APIs to natuarally grow to 64 bit.
All Microsoft APIs, and most third party APIs already use "Windows" types (BYTE, WORD, DWORD, QUADWORD, LPDWORD, etc) that are a fixed size. This is partly due to the fact that these DLLs are linked from many languages (VB, Pascal, C). They are not very C centric. Also, we are not used to recompiling everything to use a library: we likely don't have the source. We have to link carefully. Ints and longs won't do.
I do think Microsoft's choice (LLP64) fails to follow the spirit of Stroustrup's C++ standard that: "Plain ints have the natural size suggested by the architecture of the execution enviorment."
I personally have found myself avoid long in the last 5 years. After living through the 16 to 32 bit migration, I favor int32, int64, size_t, wchar_t, etc. You just can't count on the sizeof(long). I still use int, but just for counting and indexing within functions and methods, when I know my application won't come close to needing even 16 bits. If I need more than that, I use size_t.
Any chance of a re-compile of Win3.1?
Wouldn't mind seeing it run off a ramdisk, on a 2 gb ram machine, and a 4Ghz processor.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Athlon 64 users rejoice!
Whatever for? I've already got an operating system running my Athlon64. Granted I only use it to play Neverwinter Nights and Enemy Territory, but I'm satisfied.
Indeed, the upgrade to SP2 broke the anti-virus program that my parents' computer was using. The story does not end well . . . I'm still somewhat pissed at Microsoft for breaking something so vital.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
I had a Commodore 64 in - oh - 1982.
AT&ROFLMAO
In fact the Windows API requires passing pointers around in integers
Forgive me, but I can't think of any examples of this in Win32. All of the LPxxxx defines are properly typed pointers in windef.h
Do you have any examples? Maybe you were referring to Win16, where I know that was common.
a 32 bit wrapper for
a 16 bit api to
an 8 bit kernel for
a 4 bit microprocessor by
a 2 bit company that can't stand
1 bit of competition.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Interestingly the issues seen in new Windows are the same as the ones in x86_64 Linux. Except drivers aren't nearly as problematic since there are only a few "3rd party" proprietary drivers (like graphics card manufacturers), and those have had 64-bit drivers for quite some time. The drivers in the kernel tree have been cleaned up during the last 10 years (starting with the alpha port), so in many cases just a recompile is enough.
;), that way buggy browser plugins don't crash your browser completely).
(Browser) plugins are the other issue, if you need flash or proprietary format video playing using windows dll's you'll still want to use a 32-bit browser or video player. Konqueror, I believe, runs plugins as a separate process, so it's unaffected by this (it's not a bad design choice either, Firefox/mozilla/IE should do this too
So, do you need a 64-bit OS? Like mentioned in other comments, you probably don't need 64-bitness that much (unless running code processing lots of big numbers), but those extra registers you get in 64-bit mode give you a nice speed boost. And people already have enough memory in their boxes to see a benefit today (> 1GB is enough since you avoid all those TLB flushes and all that, this applies to Windows and Linux, >= 4GB for a big boost since you don't need that PAE crap)
However, those who purchased Windows XP after March 31, 2003, can trade in their copy for the 64-bit version at a cost of $12 and a voided warranty.
i got my windows xp from my school through the msdn program. i was wondering if this would be available to upgrade to winxp64. i dont want to try right now, but i plan to build a amd64 computer over summer.
HD Trailers
The thing that sucked about 16 bit addressing was if you needed more than 64k in _one_ _block_. It wasn't the total RAM (any computer had more than 64k for years), it was the addressing inside one block larger than 64k that was the problem.
E.g., take as little as a 640x480 bitmap in 16 colours (4 bit). We're talking some 150k. Now try 16 bit colour: 600k. Even addressing a pixel in that involved segment maths.
_That_ was why 32 bit had a very clear advantages.
Is 64 bit that necessary nowadays? I doubt it. Is there any desktop program out there which actually allocates more than 4 gigabytes in a single block?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
So now MS has the power to void a contract between 3rd parties, a contract to which it is not a party?
Firstly, who do they think they are that they have such power, and how do they get off thinking they have the power to do such a thing.
Why hasn't MS come out with a trade-in program for pirated copies of Windows XP? At least copies of XP installed illegally after 1st Jan 2005 should be eligible for a free copy of XP 64! (I mean, no one buys that OS, right?) :-)
Pentium Pro? You'd be lucky if the average joe had any idea what that is. More than likely, if they released it in retail, they'd get calls asking them how to install it in their Nintendo 64. It's the same number of bits, right?
You know, for all the bullshit about how Linux is ahead of MS in the 64 bit department, that's _not_ my experience with it.
Sometime during th last half of last year, i.e., after more than a year of "Linux is 64 bit already" bullshit, I actually gave it a try. Gentoo, to be precise. Let me tell you how it worked:
There were almost no drivers for anything. Not for the hard drive, not for AGP, not for anything. And that was on a Via K8T800 chipset, i.e., the chipset the A64 was launched with.
Which is just as well, because ATI also had no 64 bit drivers for my 9800 XT. I ended up staring into a 60 Hz VESA Framebuffer display for about a week before I uninstalled it.
And you know how slow that framebuffer was? Let's just say it's the first time I saw DSL downloads being braked by the speed of updating the progress bar.
But maybe it had 64 bit applications? Nope, guess again. No 64 bit OpenOffice, no 64 bit Eclipse, not one goddamn app I needed to use was ported yet. Just for a lark I tried emerging Pingus. (God knows the framebuffer speed didn't promise to be good for a game.) Guess what? That one wasn't 64 bit ready, either.
So you folks are telling me... what? That a freakin' useless system with no apps and no drivers counts as being ahead of MS? Yeah, right. That MS sucks for not loading 32 bit drivers... just like Linux didn't load ATI's 32 bit drivers? That MS's marketting is more guilty than the bleating zealots promoting a Linux system without drivers or apps as a finished and production-ready solution?
Sometimes this kind of zealotry strikes me like doing more harm than good. I can tell you that _I_ am not looking forward to trying 64 bit Linux again. (And I'm writing this in Konqueror in 32 bit mode Gentoo linux right now, so you can spare the "Redmond fanboy" wisecracks.) I think other people who got tricked by that zealotry would be even less inclined to give it another try, ever.
It may not be obvious, but _some_ truth in advertising can go a long way. Yes, we're all nerds, we're all outraged as the "creative puffering" that marketting does. But one-upping them via outright lies and outright promoting an unfinished product where only the kernel and GCC is anywhere near 64 bit ready, well, is just a way to shoot the whole Linux community in the foot.
It may not be obvious, but the _only_ use and reason to live of a computer or an OS is to run an apps, and of those is to solve a problem the user has. Same as a tool. You don't buy a microwave oven as an ideological statement against gas ovens, you buy them to actually heat some stuff in them. Same with computers.
And there a tool which sorta is imperfect beats a tool which is completely useless any day.
That's the problem with the mindless zealotry: you sold someone a solution based on _your_ ideology, rather than his needs, you've lost him as a customer for good. That tool from MS is very very imperfect, yes, but it does run Paintshop, some games, etc. It does what Joe Average wants. If your big ideology win is selling Joe a tool which doesn't do that, you haven't converted him, you've just gained someone who'll tell all his friends to stay off that Linux crap.
Just food for thought.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Holy shit... lol you are very right... my brain is frazzled from all my finals... havent slept enough... I should have at least realized why the statement I made seemed way too complicated for the action I wanted. Especially since I'm casting a unsigned long to struct which is obviously not correct... Plus there is that assign by value on structs that gets itchy FINALLY there is the lack of precision... wouldn't the problem have been the fact that it was an unsigned long being used Anyways? the fact that this assignment would propagate the error by 1 more bit of resolution loss is irrelevant since the unsigned long could never address 64bits anyways unless there was a special compiler...
I still don't get the reason for dynamic cast though... assuming I had done the pointer casting "correctly"
Gravity Sucks
My Athlon is x86 does that mean its better then Windows x64... When will micro soft bring out a 86 bits version of Windows to make full use of all the Athlon's
Stick Men
I've been using the Public beta for a while and its very fast indeed, and all my 32bit Apps worked, except nnscript for mIRC which had weird problems ?
although, will I be eligable for the trade-in ? I built my own PC but bought an OEM copy of Windows, ?
"Sweet llamas of the Bahamas !"
If you want a web server on XP Pro, have a look at Apache 2.x.. it's easy to configure (text file config with lots of helpful nots in it, edit it in notepad) and pretty speedy.
I guess not being IIS is a slight security advantage too, although any server is dangerous if you don't keep it patched fully up-to-date
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Of course you probably do not care about the difference, but when people say Linux supports 64 bits, we mean it has supported 64-bit mode on 64-bit CPUs for upwards of 10 years such as on the Alpha I kept in my apartment in college. That it is also supporting AMD64 processors is almost trivial.
You are right that there are a bunch of "desktop" apps and drivers which only really work on i386 currently, but most of the people who care about 64 bit don't need those on Linux or Windows. They need to be able to run their scientific/engineering/database apps or develop them.
Long is often the same size as int because Unix 32V (the first VAX UNIX) didn't increase the size of long going from the PDP-11 (L32 IP16) to the VAX.
Back in 1980 when I started porting code from the PDP-11 that was a surprise, long had always been longer than int up to then. I thought long should have been 64-bit back then... it was much more logical to keep a reasonable size hierarchy and use derived types and defines when size mattered. But I never imagined that people would still be using 32-bit longs on machines with 64-bit registers 25 years later. If I'd thought about it I guess I would have expected 128 bit longs, 64 bit ints, and we'd wear new short shorts or something to fill in the gap. That would give you a type that'd fit in the SSE registers.
But IL32 on a 64-bit machine? That's evil and rude.
Billions of flys can't be wrong!!
Honestly, who gives a shit about "most people"? This is news for nerds, not news for lamers...
The released Alpha version was 32-bit, but they developed 64-bit Windows on Alpha and had a 64-bit version internally years ago.
I don't know what the problem is, I mean with the LLP64 IL32 compiler model this really doesn't count as a 64-bit version. It's wasting half the capacity of the register bank by not having native code use the upper half of the words directly... it's almost like this was developed for some depraved 32-bit segmented mode on Xeon or something bloody stupid like that.
Tru64 let you use 32- or 64- bit pointers on a per-application basis. Why didn't Microsoft do that, so you could at least take advantage of the improved instruction set without having to break all your Win32 code? Just recompile it in their equivalent of -taso.
About damn time someone said this! I get approached a lot online and off by people asking about what system they buy, or I should build for them, and I couldn't give two cents about ideology when it comes to my recommendations. I'm an engineer. You know, those people who actually build real world things that solve real world problems? Well when someone is looking at getting a computer the first thing I do is identify whether they even need one [suprising how many people do not for what they need to do], what they actually want to accomplish with the dang thing, and what budget limitations exist. I also make damn sure that I get the truth about the apps part of the equation. People will lie through their teeth about gaming. With all that in hand, then I go looking for the combination of hardware, operating system, and applications will fit the bill and not bust their piggy bank at the same time. I simply can't understand anyone that would foist a particular system off on someone simply due to their [misguided?] ideologies. It's about the person stupid. You don't sell a two-seat sports car to a soccer mom with five kids. As an aside, frankly I can't see much use for 64-bit computing on the consumer front at all. For my high-end database work, yeah, that works. Ditto CAD/CAM, video editing, 3-D modeling and the like. Twiddling bits in the latest 3-D shoot-'em up, maybe [as if I wouild even play one given my eye-hand coordination deficit disorder!]. For your typical web and mail user? What would be the point? Heck, a 300 MHz Pentium II/III would handle most things for them anyway. Stupid. What I'm seeing in the industry today is a lot like the horsepower games played by the automotive manufacturers. 75 extra horse power ain't gonna do squat for you if you can't do over 70 on the freeway. Well, it might make merging/passing safer, but that's about it.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
Several applications in the background do _not_ count, because those can and do get different data and code segments. You _can_ support that without going 64 bit, and Intel's Xeon addressing did so for years already.
So does Photoshop allocate a single array of more than 4 GB? I seriously doubt that.
At 4 bytes per pixel (32 bit colour) you'd need more than 1 _billion_ pixels in a photo. I.e., you'd need to work on a picture larger than 32768 pixel tall and and 32768 wide.
Even if you print it in 300 dpi (most posters are printed in a much more coarse resolution) and wanted each dot to be its individual pixel, we're talking a roughly 110x110 inch area. I.e., a 9x9 ft poster. (About 3m by 3m in metric.)
That's already billboard sized, and those are definitely printed in an order of magnitude lower DPI.
I don't know, I just don't see many home users actually working on 32k by 32k pictures, or not every day. Heck, I doubt that any professional artist does that daily.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I have an Asus A8V-E and I use the RAID drivers even though RAID mode is completely turned off. Have you tried the RAID drivers? I don't know if the same applies to your system, but at least in my case, there's just one driver for both, but it's labelled as though it's for RAID only.
Now, if M$ finally doubled the number of bits, what did they do about the number of bugs?
Locke
Strangely (and possibly a sign the drivers aren't yet up to snuff), Microsoft will not sell the 64-bit releases in retail outlets. For now, only new PC buys can get Windows x64 Edition as an option.
a: not strange
b: nothing to do with drivers:
1: makes people upgrade to faster machine anyway - wow this runs faster (more ram etc)
2: bouys IT industry with another round of upgrades
delta: microsoft often make people upgrade thier os to have a new media plyer, browser or web server, if they made it.
So not suprising.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Erm.... b***ocks. I'm running Linux on an Athlon64 for six months now, and everything's there and functional on the hardware you mention.
OK there's no 64 bit openoffice yet, but the 32 bit binary version works perfectly.
You're talking utter rubbish. Everything works, including IDE, SATA, Gigabit Ethernet, 8x AGP and accelerated graphics. It plays Doom 3 like a dream.
WTF did you do wrong?!!
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
WTF did you do wrong?!!
If you read his post carefully, you'll notice that he bought an ATI card.
Im sure he did not even own a 64 bit machine. :)
Parent is a Microsoft Shill! Please examine post history if you must, then MOD DOWN! SAY NO TO ASTRO TURFING!
And we don't want to miss out on 64-bit Solitaire!
Which means Long and Pointer are 64 bits.
Solaris 32 bits is ILP32, or Int, Long and Pointer are 32 bits.
And yeah, having consulted on some rather massive 32-bit to 64-bit conversions, Microsoft is probably trying to avoid some of the pitfalls of the conversion.
It'll be futile, though. There are too many idiots who think they're smarter than the compiler and system header files and just know that size_t isn't really size_t, it's really unsigned int because that's what it was on the toy system they coded on while getting thier masters from Podunk U.
I call Bullshit.
i have been running linux on a dual Opteron for 4 months now with NO problems. granted I went Nvidia, and they care about releasing drives for linux people so I had no problems there... UT2004 in 64 bit (yup the 64 bit version of the linux app is on the install CD's) is screaming fast. All drivers are there in 64 bit goodness, SATA is happy as well as my u320 Scsi raid.
Care to actually list the hardware you claim that there was no support for? Myself and several others in the LUG have no problems with 64bit linux. Also anyone having a shit fit over an office app running in 32 bit mode really needs to get a life. We have been using Suse 9.2 and it runs all the 32 bit apps happily on the 64 bit system. If you were a real gentoo user you would have known how to get 32 bit emulation turned on.
here, waht help? this obscure website
Suse has it set up for you already, but as a Gentoo user you must be an advanced linux pro to choose it over a newbie distro like Suse that configures everything for you already.
this is NOT a dig on Gentoo users, you guys typically are levels above the "I hate text files" crowd, I just know that the parent is lying and am trying to make a point about it.
if the parent is actually truthful i strongly suggest he choose a distro that has more automatic configurations and is ready for 64 bit like Suse.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
1. Turn up the warning level on your compiler as high as it can go. Make sure all your code compiles completely cleanly. (There are some that you can't fix - debug identifiers being too long in MSVC, for example.) The compiler turns your code into machine languages. A warning means the folks who wrote the compiler think you've done something that's a bad idea. When the folks who wrote the app you're using say you've had a bad idea, it's usually a good thing to listen to them.
2. Don't outsmart the system. If your system defines "size_t", "off_t", etc. use them! OK, MS is stupid and doesn't provide ssize_t for return types from read() and write(), so you'll have to fix that.
3. Use something like Purify on your app. (you probably should be doing this anyway, but...) If you just ported from 32 to 64 bits and Purify starts complaining about lots of 4-byte unitialized memory reads, there's a good chance you missed someting big.
4. Learn your compiler. Many newer compilers have better warning/error detection options. Sun's Studio 9 C++ compiler has the "-xport64" option that explicitly looks for 32-to-64-bit port problems.
5. Compile using strict ANSI/ISO C/C++. Can be difficult, but if your compiler supports strict ANSI/ISO C/C++, that' supposed to be guaranteed portable.
6. Stay in the mainstream of the language. Don't go to the esoteric edges. If you have to read the language standard or some text book to figure out how to do something, it's probably too esoteric to use in production code. If you have to ask someone else how to do it, it's definitely too esoteric.
7. If you're working in C, use lint. Religiously. Lint is your friend. If it says something's wrong, something's wrong. Your C code should be lint-clean.
8. Avoid code that depends on evaluation order. C and C++ do not define evaluation order of a statement. That means it almost certainly will change from platform to platform and compiler to compiler. Maybe even from optimization or debug level to optimization or debug level in the same compiler! Do not use a variable more than once in a statement if it is updated in that statement. Do not use multiple increment/decrement operators in a single statement. Etc. Basically, unless you know C and C++ inside and out, only put one operation per line. And by line I mean "thing that ends with a ';'". Splitting a statement over more than one line isn't going to help here.
"""WTF did you do wrong?!!
If you read his post carefully, you'll notice that he bought an ATI card."""
And he installed gentoo and expected it to work flawlessly, although in this case it sounds like it is working as it should. Zealot zealot zealot, let's insult things we don't understand because it's just *office instead of *office64, and 32-bit drivers?!?! Who the hell wants those? Zealot, GOD, Linux is such _ _ _ _, at least windows only blows up half the time. *yawn*
For now your blue screens will be rendered in 64-bit!
unable to resolve function slashdot.sig(), aborting...
Whats the overhead on WOW? I know in testing versions the overhead when running 32bit applications was ridiculus, unlike linux where there is no overhead whatsoever.
Ive been running 64-bit gentoo for almost 2 years its not pioneering anymore. Im just awaiting 64-bit flash and media codecs for mplayer.
Shoulda had nvidia as ATI drivers utterly suck in linux not that they are any good in windows either. I get about 12,000 FPS in glxgears with my FX5950U.
As for chipsets bitch to the hw vendors, they are the ones that are the reason kernel devs have to write thier own drivers.
Hmmm, I've had a completely different experience with 64 bit Gentoo... I'm currently running 64 bit Gentoo Linux on an FX-55 chip. I dual booted into WinXP 64 bit for a little while, but found the lack of native 64 bit applications (and especially drivers) to be irritating (I'm not a big fan of Windows to begin with either). I've found the biggest speed increases have nothing to do with 64 bit code though. In fact memory access seems to be way, way, way faster. There is also no more "bigmem" option, which was required to address more than 768MB of RAM in 32 bit Linux (at the expense of performance). Ok, so some apps seem to have benefited, and there is a lot of 64 bit optimized code for Linux, but man, applications (32 bit or 64 bit) launch faster, the OS boots faster... I'm really happy with the 64 bit switch. My experience with 64 bit WinXP was much more similar to what you describe with 64 bit Gentoo actually... No drivers, no 64 bit binaries, nothing ran correctly. The few 64 bit drivers that were out there (nVidia mostly) were stripped down versions of the 32 bit software; no supporting apps/control panels. Sound was all FUBAR too (not to imply that 64 bit ALSA was easy to get working). This all seemed to be related to the inability to install non "64 bit Windows Certified" drivers.
The browser thing (32 bit plugins don't work) was annoying at first... Then I just installed adblock and told it to strip out all flash content. I don't even miss it :) You can use Konqueror with 32 bit plugins, but c'mon, who wants to have to run two web browsers just to see flash ads?
For me, the real frustrating parts of running a 64 bit OS right now are two fold. One, all the closed-source CODECs are still 32 bit only which means a side-by-side install of 32 bit media players is required to say, play WM files in Linux. That side-by-side install is the other pain. Though Gentoo has done a good job of it, I have two of every library installed; one 32 bit and one 64 bit. Some apps have to be compiled 32 bit, which GCC does a good job of, but if it gets linked to a 64 bit library or gets pissy about a 64 bit dependancy, you're sunk.
All-in-all I've seen no reason whatsoever (for ME) to run 64 bit Windows when the open source community has been working so hard to churn out a butt-load of 64 bit apps (the 64 bit Gentoo Portage tree is almost as large as the 32 bit tree now). The big irony is that I've been chomping at the bit for a 64 bit Windows release to spur the authoring of 64 bit drivers, CODECs, and games. So bigs thumbs up here for 64 bit Windows even though I have no plans to run it.
I'm going to go ahead and say it though; 64 bit Windows XP PRO RC2 (the latest 64bit Win I ran) can't hold a candel to 64 bit Gentoo Linux. That said, I did spend a lot of time reading up on 64 bit Linux and waited until nVidia released 64 bit drivers, then bought an nVidia mobo/GPU. I would have been really mad if I had to load 2D-only drivers on my 6800 Ultra, but then I wouldn't drop $500 on a graphics card until I made sure that it supported by the OS I intended to run. I'm also not going to let my horrible experience with 64 bit Windows sour me on the OS forever; I'll simply try again down the road when it is more "main stream". If MS makes a better 64 bit OS than Linux - I'll switch.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
Unless my copy of XP for some reason does not qaulify for this offer, the application form on the MS site is broken: I tried entering my COA details, and while field #1 accepts 5 characters, the remaining 4 accept only 3 characters per field.
Bah, I guess that accounts for the free support call.
but isn't that kinda ruff'?
..comming from a pussy?
;)
Smile.
seriously, I just don't NEED this pos :)
I have an amd64 machine which came with XP home edition. Is it just me or does this trade in only seem to apply to XP pro?
Although, x64 users will get one free support call to Microsoft
okay, okay, let's ignore the obvious 'one phone call from jail' joke.
Still, one free call...how big of them. What are you supposed to do for the *second* installation problem, though?
http://xkcd.com/386/
NOBODY mentioned NT5 (build 3), a 64 bit NT system originally designed by 100 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) engineers and a handful of the microsluff, at Redmond, for the 64 bit Dec Alpha.
If you search your (Slashdot) archives you still might be able to find a lengthy post in regard to the Microsoft/DEC hype on this 64 bit vaporware OS; however, developers did get a copy. This post also showed how 'the boyz in the backroom' scuttled 64 bit development and hardware (sans SGI); keeping Intel at the 'top of the pile'.
Despite I have been involved in Unice based systems since their beginning, have assisted on alternative developement, and run multiple test systems, I hate to say it, but I've been running this software (NT5) for six years and have only seen one BSOD, due to an overloaded disk that would not accept a write.
To bad Redmond got rid the the DEC folks, they might have been into something.
It's worth noting that a 64-bit version of LightWave 3D was also announced. And I haven't seen the video, but I've been told that it was even mentioned by Gates... (Now I need another shower.) So, now I have a real excuse to go 64-bit. As the charts and graphs on benchmarks say: Render time (Less is better)
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Nice. Leave it to Microsoft to expect consumers to be omniscient. Scads of machines (specifically laptops to my knowledge) have been sold with the Athlon 64 processor and XP Home preinstalled. I, for instance, purchased mine back in February of '04. Somehow at that time I was expected to be cognizant of the fact that I'd need to have Pro preinstalled in order to simply have legitimate access to the future 64 bit version of Windows.
Off the top of my head I can think of 64 bit eMachines, Compaqs and Gateways that have been available for purchase since the release of the 64 Athlon that all came with XP Home preinstalled. Amazingly it would seem that these users can't even upgrade to Windows 64 final even if they're willing to pony up a full retail cost. Ridiculous.
rev.jsfk
Had you read the Parent Post, you would have noticed he was talking about problems he/she had installing it in the second half of last year. It was in reply to the grandparent post's claim that Linux has been 64 bit for 2 years.
Linux has been 64 bit for longer than 2 years.
I ran 64 bit linux on an ultrasparc 4 years ago.
windows is WAYYYY behind.
WTF did you do wrong?!!
Thanks for being part of the problem, you asshole.
And you wonder why users aren't flocking to Linux? When every issue someone brings up about problems they have running it is met with a "RTFM n00b" and an accusation that the user did something wrong?
-Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither. -Ben Franklin
Actually, you'll have to buy a new system in order to get it: x64 Windows releases will not be sold on retail shelves - only as an option from manufacturers selling PCs...
If the OEM version is available from white-box clone shops, and therefore also at swapmeets, then all you need to buy is a motherboard or hard drive. Maybe other hardware components qualify you for the OEM as well but I do not recall. Well that's the way it used to work with the 32-bit versions. Swapmeet vendors were bad about enforcing this and MS went on a crackdown. Some creative vendors became very strict about you having to buy a hard drive. They had a pile of 540MB drives, used, as-is, no warranty, US$5 each, for people wanting an OEM copy of Windows.
stdint.h
Thank you.
I will be using those definitions from now on.
Stick Men
So when mac users wanted 64 bit support, they had to upgrade for $150 to Panther, it's rather nice that Microsoft is giving away the upgrade for many existing customers.
.: 2+2 = PI SQRT(1+N)
You don't buy a microwave oven as an ideological statement against gas ovens, you buy them to actually heat some stuff in them. Same with computers.
Well, with today's power-hungry processors, that's becoming a distinct possibility.
You don't prove anything with your anecdote.
Summer 2004 we painlessly installed several opteron-based linux servers, using 64 bits linux, and gentoo distribution.
We had no problem whatsoever with these servers since, despite them doing a lot of different tasks to do (all server-oriented).
IMHO you should have known better about the hardware and software support prior to your decision to go linux 64 bits.
Then two possibilities:
* You would have concluded that it is not ready for what you want to do with it, and go 32 bits..
* You would have chosen compatible components.
Anyway you wouldn't be whining here about your experience.
You are wrong when you claim about linux AMD64 being immature: it was just not ready for what you intended to do with it, and mostly because (proprietary) drivers were not available (and not the because of the core of linux).
Linux AMD64 is ready for the server for a long time, but it's only now that I'm thinking about using it in my personal computer where my needs are vastly different.
Two types of 32bit binaries won't work in 64bit Windows -
* drivers
* shell extensions
Don't know about latter, but it is trivial to rebuild former using x64 DDK. If the code is not a complete hack and has a grain of abstraction, then literally there's all there is to it - modify few header files and rebuild the sources.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Though I can understand that Microsoft only releases Win64 with boxen that work, I do feel a bit awkward.
First Win64 is ready for beta testing and prime time just when Intel readies it's compatible processors. Now Win64 is only sold preinstalled. This market is predominantly Intels, where AMD is more used for upgrades.
Am I starting to get paranoid, or do I feel a strong Intel backing from Microsoft. I'm undecided as yet.
because the user did do something wrong?
no 64bit version of Eclipse? Eclipse is a Java app. Install the AMD64 version of java and you have a 64bit version of Eclipse!
Why the heck would you want a 64bit version of OpenOffice? You would gain nothing and the program size would be larger.
How is the distros fault if you have a Video card that does not have 64bit drivers? Shouldn't you be jumping up and down on ATI?
Seems like most people are not having the problems you are.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
They did the same thing with Windows 95 OSR2. Still really annoying; I already own 64-bit hardware and can't get a 64-bit Windows after the fact without jumping through hoops.
the minute you used the word zealot I knew you were lying your ass off.
evil is as evil does
That's a perfectly good response to somebody who calls you a zealot. He didn't really expect to be treated civilly after he started defaming people did he?
By the way you make a wonderful MS spokesman.
evil is as evil does
Microsoft: "Microsoft tech support, how may I help you today?"
Customer: "I have an Athlon 64 and I need some help".
Microsoft: "Ok, you only get to ask one question".
Customer: "Only one?"
Microsoft: "Thank you for calling..."
cause splinter cell is definitely cr4cked... ;)
I need to read up on this. Can you suggest a good authoritative book or web site?
Stick Men