Linked by John O'Sullivan on Fri 17th Oct 2003 17:48 UTC
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." Bill Gates, 1981. "64 bit is coming to desktops,there is no doubt about that, But apart from Photoshop, I can't think of desktop applications where you would need more than 4 gigabytes of physical memory, which is what you have to have in order to benefit from this technology." It seems to me that by the time it ships, Longhorn will need 4 gigs of RAM.
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I have been following and analyzing Microsoft's corporate moves and product announcements for a long time. If it is currently 2003 and MS says Longhorn will ship in 2006, that means 2007 at the earliest, and by that time I can see 4GB (or more) RAM being common in the desktop systems of power users. Bill Gates is a brilliant (and ruthless) business man, but he is often short-sighted in his visions of the future. In 1994 he wasn't about the power of the Internet at all, he was all about CD-ROM in his speaches. In 1997 he was talking up DVD-ROM as being the future of home computing, and that never took off at all.
That said, however, I think his comment "I can't think of desktop applications where you would need more than 4 gigabytes of physical memory" is in reference to TODAY'S desktop applications. No, you don't need 4GB of RAM to run Office, download music, watch movies, burn CDs, or send/receive emails and IMs. He's right. But that will obviously change in time, anybody who can't spot a trend toward more feature, more bloat in every single application (especially MS's own stuff) isn't paying much attention.