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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.
Does a call to MS support cost so much that one free call is worth mentioning in the summary? It costs $35 for a "basic" call for a home user. An advanced support call costs $245. http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?ln=e n-us&x=5&y=3&gprid=6794&
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
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.
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...
There is a slight amount of increased overhead because they are running in an emulated environment called Windows on Windows (WoW), but the performance decrease, if any, is speculated to be around 5%.
shop.envescent.com - Computer hardware and more.
See MS link to it here.
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...
Well, many applications.
Anything that is doing tricky work tied closely to the OS might have problems:
Anti-virus, firewalls, virtual private networks, low-level utilities, etc.
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.
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).
Here's part of the text, for those who do not want to follow the link to RTA:
Licensing on a per-processor rather than a per-core basis ensures that customers will not face additional software licensing requirements or incur additional licensing fees when they choose to adopt multicore processor technology. Customers who use software from vendors that license by individual core, as other software vendors currently do, may face increased software costs when they upgrade to multicore processor systems. Multicore processor systems licensed on a per-processor basis will also help make this new enterprise computing technology affordable to mid-size and small business customers.
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.
Unfortunetly you can't just upgrade from 32 to 64 bit. The x64 OS is a 'full' install, and you should do it on a partition that does not already have a 32-bit OS installed on it (otherwise weird things can go on with your Program Files & some other system folders).
What you can do to make the transition much more seamless is to use the File & Settings Transfer Wizard that is included on the x64 CD (it is a newer version than what shipped with 32-bit XP, so make sure you use this updated one). It will pack all your (surprise) files & settings up and then you can import them to your new x64 install.
As for 'will 64 break most/all of my 32 bit apps?' - no. Pretty much all of your 32 bit apps will still be able to run - and often will run faster. The main exceptions are apps that have drivers along with them, which will need to have an update provided by the company that wrote the app to include a 64-bit driver.
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.
> OS X Tiger is supposed to be full 64-bits through and through
Apple never made this claim. Only the POSIX environment is fully 64-bit -- Carbon/Cocoa/Java/etc are still 32-bit.
Tiger is NOT fully 64-bit. The memory system supports 64-bit pointers. But you can't write a 64-bit GUI application. Carbon and Cocoa are not 64-bit.
A 64-bit application has to be broken into two executables, a 32-bit GUI front-end and a 64-bit engine.
I must be missing something... I don't get why that was modded 'funny'.
Anyway, Intel's "Extended Memory 64 Technology" (EM64T) is compatible tech. They have Pentium 4 w/ EM64T and Xeon w/ EM64T processors that will run Win XP x64 Edition (and the Server 2003 x64 Editions) just fine.
Oddly enough, they decided to re-compile all the Windows games like Minesweeper and Solitaire to 64-bit. However, they decided not to re-compile some important applications like Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker.
"Great, now all people need are some applications really designed to take advantage of it...."
Newtek just announced a 64-bit version of Lightwave. Okay, this isn't a must-have product for the masses, but 3d artists tend to be the ones to make the most of their new found bits and hertz.
"Derp de derp."
The OS is there for whoever needs it. Microsoft is just making sure that people don't start upgrading without understanding the limitations.
And that's certainly what appears on my laptop (32-bit Windows).
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/64-bits/index .x?pg=1
It's not just about memory.
AMD made it so that a program running in pure 64-bit mode has access to double the number of general purpose registers and SIMD registers. More registers == fewer memory accesses && fewer memory accesses == faster programs.
The Alpha NT port was 32 bit. DEC's linker (and also binutils for AXP) supported a 'restrict addresses to 32bit and clear most significant 32bits of addresses' mode for ease of porting applications to Digital Unix, eg Netscape was (effectively) 32bit on AXP. Google for 'taso linker'.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
A 64-bit application has to be broken into two executables, a 32-bit GUI front-end and a 64-bit engine.
Technically, yes, but the way OS X handles executable packages, both executables can be bound together, so that the user sees only one "application." If done well, both executables will look like one, unless you run top.
I found it the opposite. I use ubuntu and all I needed to do is write apt-get install apache.
/var/www I think and I didn't have to modify any config files to configure it.
After doing this the web server was up and running and I didn't need to do anything other than apt-get the packages (such as php, it had a quite readable list just by searching for apache) that I wanted the server to run and it just worked ((tm), apparently). It told me it was set up in
I was surprised how easy it was because I had tried not long before to run a web server on Windows XP Pro and it took me a very very long time to get it up and running, and even then didn't have things like a database (you need to pay for that).
Perhaps it's just been a long time since you've tried this. Linux has made huge leaps in just the past couple of years in usability, and should this trend continue it will most definitely eclipse Longhorn before its release.
Nothing in 64-bit yet. But there are games with 64-bit extensions that do give a nice performance increase. Fff the top of my head, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Chronicles of Riddick both have 64-bit extensions.
(A) No, I have a useless XP/Itanium CD somewhere around here.l
(B) http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/64bit.htm
(E) Already the default OS on Dell workstations.
(F) Suck my bag.
SQL running on an x64 is awesome. The increased capabilities of the OS (performance, memory, I/O, etc) give it a serious boost. Some of the demos show literally a 5x improvement in DB perf (query response time, number of connected users, etc).
Same holds true in the web space. The improvements to memory, etc, let IIS serve pages way more effeciently - meaning the server responds faster, can serve more simultaneous pages, recovers from request surges, etc, way better than a 32-bit server. ASP.NET web applications get great benefits in scalability too.
Basically the thing to take away is that it isn't just '64-bit native' server apps that take advantage of an x64, it is virtually any server app. Even a simple server app could get a boost just from the system's ability to handle more simultaneous TCP/IP connections.
There are 2 versions of Internet Explorer in 64 bit windows. One is the 32 bit version that runs in WOW the other is a native 64 bit version. The 32 bit version is the default (i.e. if you click start:run:internet it will be the 32 bit version), and 32 bit plugins, including flash, work in it. Sorry?
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 !"
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.
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.
heres four cracks for you. you researched that well eh? http://megagames.com/cracks/html/c911870_0.htm
You're thinking of Chaos Theory, not Pandora Tomorrow, which was cracked long ago.
ISO-C99 specifies that {u,}int{8,16,32,64}_t must be defined in stdint.h. If you use those consistantly, you will get the size you need no matter which system you are on.
They are real indeed. OEM versions, so you have to buy a memory module or a floppy disk drive with the CD. They always sell stuff early in Japan.