Complaining about Windows Vista is a national past time on Internet forums these days. Windows Vista 'costs too much', 'has onerous product activation', 'requires too much hardware', etc. These complaints are often followed up by a very simple boast: 'I'm just going to switch to Linux'. But in today's landscape, how viable is that statment? Is the threat to switch to Linux an empty one, or is it entirely possible?"
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Member since:2005-07-06
Excuse me, that has to be the worse comparison I've ever seen; the move to 64bit will be *nothing* like the move from 16bit to 32bit.
Move from 16bit to 32bit yeilded protected memory, pre-emptive multi-tasking, fine grain threading and so forth; the move from 32bit to 64bit yielding alot less for the amount of pain it is actually bringing to the party.
90% of people who use their laptop for 'ordinary stuff' won't *need* what 64bit brings; the hardware they buy can't handle the amount of memory of which 64bit claims to support, if they want more than 4gigs, the current 32bit CPU's can support it by virtue of PAE.
Member since:2005-07-18
90% of people ... won't *need* what 64bit brings ...
That reminds me of a guy I met back in '81 that said a similar thing as he steadfastly declared that CP/M can do all you need to do in only 64KB, so you don't need an IBM PC with 128KB that runs PC/DOS.
Personally, I find 512MB is plenty of memory for my software development, browsing and office-app needs. But the growth in demand for more is inexorable.
Member since:2006-05-28
Member since:
2005-07-06
I wouldn't tell people not to use 64bit OS's. There may not be a lot of applications that take advantage of it but that doesn't mean there won't be in the future. As more people upgrade they will only be able to find 64bit chips and manufacturers will start producing more 64bit applications, then pretty soon everything will be 64bit. Its kind of like when we went from Windows 3.11 16bit to win95/98 32bit. Its very rare to find a 16bit application nowadays.