32 bit computing

[John]

I'd like to see some documentation stemming from Microsoft to support that theory.

On the contrary, I expect to see 32bit around for at least a decade.  There are too many existing 32bit applications written for Microsoft to stop supporting it quickly.

Simply extending it to their own products like Office.  YES there is a 64bit office, but you cannot leverage automation tools, plugin-ins, and interfaces that are 32bit with a 64bit Office suite.  I cannot fathom any large scale company that will be able to deploy 64bit Office and leave all their tools behind that intergrate with it.  For this reason alone I can see 32bit support in the OS surviving quite a long time.

I don't think this is the same as the migration from 16 bit to 32 bit computing. Servers have been running 64 bit OSs (for years) and Linux is much farther ahead than Microsoft with a 64 bit OS. I think the switch to 64 bit is going to much faster as mobile has left a lot less PC users to care. Apple wasn't much of a force in the 16 to 32 change over and that's not true this time around.

[kryton9]

Its been what-- 10 years now that we have had 64 bit cpus?  Like you said the change from 16 to 32 went by quickly because it was needed and you could see a big difference in performance. With 64 bit, this doesn't seem to be the case that much.

I think Microsoft should have made XP the last windows 32 bit operating system with a c based api.  All those years they worked on Vista should have been a new api based on c++ and 64 bit only with no backward compatibility. Just say you like 32 bit and your software, we will support XP for so many more years, lets say a generous 7 years or 10.  That gives plenty of time for people to migrate when they could have seen a new Windows 64 with a modern C++ based Api with no legacy support to worry about.

I think mobility is key too John. I have only one desktop from 2005 in my ownership anymore. Everything else is netbooks and notebooks or mobile devices. I love the grab and go ability these products offer with the flexibility to have a nice monitor and keyboard/mouse use when home.