Microsoft makes its way to 64-bit chips

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There are LOTS of reasons WHY...: What I mean is, if I bought 32bit servers when Itanium was definately Itanic in scope and Opterons were still not being ofered by the big vendors and I now have the need to upgrade my collaboration software then it means a forced hardware update and a forced OS update which will force other app updates....

If however MS kept backward compatibility, there will be no need to upgrade. In otherwords, if MS was more like Linux that can still run on a 386 (and has been ported to 286's and IBM XT boxes) then this forced upgrade would not be neccessary.

Funny you should mention backward compatibility given that one of the "flaws" certain critics of Windows has made has been that there's TOO much backward compatibility.

Backward compatibility has it's benefits AND it's limitations. Sure, you don't have to upgrade hardware at the same time as the software, but on the other hand, there may be features that are NOT available or are somehow limited with a 32 bit architecture. As the article said, one of the benefits of having Exchange 12 and a 64 bit box is having a larger mailbox. Lord knows there are plenty of packrats out there in the digital universe who like to keep every e-mail they ever get - including spam and such. Granted, this may not be right for EVERYONE, but there is obviously enough demand for this feature.

As for running XP (or Vista) on a boat anchor 386 or 286 even - WHY would you want to even try? Those machines are slower than molassass in January at the North Pole compared to a 3500+ Opteron server. In addition to that, both of those bone yard architectures are extremely limited as to the amount of RAM available to run applications and to the size of hard drive they can recognize. I can't see anyone really WANTING to run XP with a maximum of 8 MB of RAM using a hard drive that isn't anywhere near big enough to even do a minimal install of the operating system in the first place.

As far as running 16 bit apps... Once again, I question WHY anyone would want to do that. If you're running a specific mission critical application, the handwriting's been on the walls for years now that the life expectency of that 16 bit app is at it's end. It's time to call the author(s) of the program and negotiate and get at least a 32 bit solution in the works. Better still, make it 64 bit. And if they're not around, find someone who can. It's NOT like there aren't any unemployed programmers out there who wouldn't jump at the chance to build a better 32 or 64 bit version of your app.; Posted by: Wolfie2K3 Posted on: 11/16/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use