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Microsoft To Dump 32-Bit After Vista
SlinkySausage writes "Microsoft has used its annual hardware engineering conference to announce that Windows Vista and Server 2008 will be the last versions of Windows capable of booting on 32-bit CPUs such as Intel Pentium 4 and Core Duo. AMD, which introduced 64-bit CPUs early — much to the derision of Intel, which said there was no use for them at the time — must be delighted with Microsoft's decision. Owners of first-generation Intel Macs that used (32-bit only) Core Duo CPUs may not be so happy knowing that Vista will be the last Windows they will be able to run."
....I assure you, I'll be alright.
Does this mean that MS are going to inflict another operating system on us in the near future?
made today will be able to run the Microsoft replacement for Vista. Why worry?
Microsoft themselves still don't support 64-bit yet. I installed the 64-bit version of SQL Server 2005 only to find it doesn't support 64-bit for SQL Mail and SSIS - you have to run the 32-bit versions of them under WoW64. Someone else has already mentioned drivers. If Microsoft can't or won't support their own software under 64 bit environments, they are going to have a heck of a time convincing developers to push everything over.
I fear there will be a loooooooong transition time - just as well they gave everyone an early warning.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
But running an emulator just for a quick game of Missile Command, Asteroids, Centipede, Battlezone, tempest, Tetris, etc, etc, is annoying.
The other day I put Win 3.11 up against Windows Vista at Chess. Just to clarify I played Chess Titans up against Chess.exe from the Microsoft Entertainment pack, at expert level.
With Vista being the newcomer Titan's got to play first. After about 30 seconds of thinking, Vista made it's _first_ move, in which chess.exe responded to immediately. From there a furious battle across the board started, with chess.exe taking more and more time to think along the way.
After about a half an hour of playtime the game ended with Windows 3.11 crashing, In some sort of ironic twist, one move from checkmating.. Vista.
Heh.
Chess.exe might have had an advantage in that it is thinking on the opponents turn, but I'm still surprised Chess Titans was beat out by a fifteen year old program made for a computer a thousand times slower. Go Microsoft!
Before anyone falls into the trap I almost fell into, please note that the Core Duo is not the 64-bit capable Core2 Duo.
Thanks for the heads up.
I find the "PC" world funny. I've used higher end equipment for quite some time, and I've found myself back into "commodity" land and its pretty confusing.
The summary says "AMD, which introduced 64-bit CPUs early". Huh?
DEC Alpha chips were introduced in 1992 and were 64-bit. SPARC went 64-bit in 1995. MIPS went 64-bit in 1991. PA-RISC in 1996.
AMD came out with 64bit/32bit hybrid chips in what? 2002-2003?
How is this early?
Also, Intel introduced the Itanium, a pure 64-bit chip in 2001. They had a strange i860 chip in the late 80s that was 64-bit.
I've been running 64-bit linux for about 10 years plus or minus 6 months.
To me, I find the x86_64 stuff to be a hack and late to the game. The only reason its remotely interesting is that its cheap, but calling this new or interesting is completely wrong.