Windows XP X64 Goes Gold

Kasracer writes "According to The Inquirer, 'Microsoft has released the final version of Windows XP 64 to manufacturing, meaning that those with machines that have 64-32 bit processors in from AMD and latterly Intel can now see what the extra addressing brings to the party.'"

correction

[Anonymous Coward]

"... those with machines that have 64-32 bit processors in from AMD and latterly Intel can now see what the extra addressing brings to the party."..when running Windows. Solaris x86, linux, etc have seen what the extra addressing brings for a while now.

Now only a few more years.....

[Laurance]

Now only a few more years and we might have 64 bit applications

Re:Longhorn

[Anonymous Coward]

Shh... be quiet, vedy quiet...

Let them take all the time they want on implementing Longhorn. Meanwhile, we'll have X running on top of OpenGL with Cairo, plus Beagle on the desktop ;)

Re:Longhorn

[netrage_is_bad]

It for the Money. If everyone with a 64bit processor buys an essentially recompiled version of XP, and then buys longhorn when it comes out (whenever that is) they have successfully sold one more product than they would have.

Re:Don't get *too* excited yet...

[Lisandro]

XP x64 has also completely dropped 16bit support. No more old DOS programs. No more Win3.1 programs. More importantly (as I mentioned above), no more installers that used 16 bit code, even for purely 32-bit programs.

Ditto, there's still a lot of those out there. I would expect Microsoft to drop atleast a 16-bit VM of some sort - specially for a desktop oriented OS.

Wow, another Microsoft public Beta!

[farrellj]

Wow, another Microsoft public Beta!

Great, the people who sold me the Gigabyte AMD64 motherboard will possibly admit there is a 64 bit operating system now...I had a Gigabyte motherboard that as soon as it got out of the bootloader and went 64 Bit, it would reboot! I should have stuck to ASUS originally.

I swapped out the Gigbyte MB, put in an ASUS...same CPU, Memory, everything and I pass the 64 bit transition, and away I went to load 64Bit Linux! Cool.

ttyl
Farrell

Re:Don't get *too* excited yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

XP x64 has also completely dropped 16bit support. No more old DOS programs. No more Win3.1 programs. More importantly (as I mentioned above), no more installers that used 16 bit code, even for purely 32-bit programs.

I say good riddence.

I too look forward to running XP x64 on my Athlon64. But for the moment, the average Joe just doesn't have that as a realistic option. In another six months, perhaps. But not yet.

Your average Joe probably isn't using a 64 bit x86 chip either.

The transition has to start sometime. If not now, when?

Re:Don't get *too* excited yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so let's bury our heads in the sand, cry "it sucks" and go about our merry way.

I remember this same argument circa 1994/1995 with the OS/2 & Win95 battles, and on the fence were the DOS/Desqview and Win 3.1 users crying foul and raising all sorts of bloody hell.

Instead of bitching about what it doesn't support, why not embrace the technology and be a part of helping it move forward?

Slashdot poster in 2020 " Windows 128Bit sucks because it doesn't support my 32 bit WidgetApp from 2002".

Sheesh!

I tested this

[Anonymous Coward]

I tested the betas now and then and submitted a lot of bug reports. The thing is I am happy dual-booting Windows Media Center 2005 and Gentoo AMD64. I don't really find a need to run this for desktop use yet. As everything I use still runs in 32 bit emulated mode. It's just not worth it. Now when Longhorn comes out by that time all processors for high end desktops should already be x86_64. That's great, Microsoft is just using this release as a testing bed for upcoming OSs. I'll stick with Windows MC 2005 and Gentoo for now.

Good luck to them, but I don't feel like paying to beta test future Longhorn kernels. They should be paying me.

Re:April Fool ?

[js3]

They were? I pity the fool. A good april fools is not only hard to spot but funny as well, I can't say that happened yesterday.

Re:Don't get *too* excited yet...

[pla]

Excuse me but if you are still running a 16-bit application, then you are in a very special situation. And you are keenly aware of that fact.

The application itself, probably. But you apparently missed the point about the installer... If you can't install your 32 or 64 bit program, you can't use it.

It might also suprise you just how many programs do still use 16-bit code. A lot of command-line utils, for one. A lot of low-end games (card and puzzle-type), for another. Now, you might say that you never use the command line or play Chips Challenge, in which case, good for you. But most of us just expect our computers to do what we want them to.


Now, with the 32-bit hardware driver problem, I can understand that. But Microsoft already ran 16-bit apps under emulation since the earliest days of NT (via NTVDM or WOW - If you ever see either of those in yout task manager, you still use 16-bit code for something) - I see absolutely no reason whythey would have discontinued that.

Re:can now?

[northcat]

EMT64T and AMD64 are the same thing (technically at least). Collectively they're called x86-64.

Re:"extra addressing...."

[argent]

The advantages of the AMD-64 archetecture go far beyond the additional address space.

I would absolutely say that the biggest advantage has nothing to do with the address space. The biggest advantage tha Alpha gave us, for the decade where it maintained its performance lead despite benign and not-so-benign neglect, wasn't the larger address space (there were only a few people who actually needed 64 bits), but the huge register bank and celever instruction set (especially the memory barrier instructions, which provided the same capabilities as the IA64 bundles without locking the architecture down to things like counts of function units).

If 64 bits is the gimmick ittakes to shake off even a bit of the dust of the Intel experience, I'm all for it... but for most people that's all it is... a gimmick.

Re:If it went gold

[zenneth]

To get this far with jokes like that you must have adamantium balls.

Slashdot bias showing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows XP X64 went gold on March 31 and we see it on /. two days later?
Tiger went gold on April 1 and no time was wasted in posting that news.
Both are closed source operating systems.
Explain.

Re:Is it worth upgrading?

[Skuld-Chan]

On my desktop with the XP 64 beta I was incredibly impressed by its performance. Applications didn't run faster per se, but the whole os booted nearly instantly, and programs (even 32 bit apps like office) loaded nearly instantly. IO performance was much better.

Re:Heh

[pilkul]

You really sound like you have an axe to grind against Microsoft. You do realize that Microsoft consists of hundreds of teams of developers of differing abilities, many of them bought out from smaller companies like yours? There are examples of poor MS software (Windows ME) as well as examples of solid, best-of-breed MS software (Visual C++). It's bizarre to leap from a bug in a file manager dialog to assuming that core memory management code is also bad.

You make me think of Phil Katz, the former boss of the company that made PKZIP. His software was dominant in the DOS days, but he distrusted Windows so much that he refused to port it to Windows 95 when it came out. Like you, he didn't trust Microsoft APIs and wanted to keep full control of what was going on. The result: PKZIP lost the market to WinZip. Don't let your loathing of MS get in the way of good business decisions.

Re:Longhorn

[guaigean]

But it's an example. It shows that although Microsoft is percieved as having an absolute economic advantage due to it's mammoth size and FUD, that it will carry over. In the case of IE vs Firefox, it was the first big decline MS has had in years, showing that they are not invincible. Now that it has happened, more and more people are starting to question if it can be done again, in different ways. Just because two comparisons are not identical, doesn't mean that they cannot be compared as models.

Re:64 bits?

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

Have you actually seen a BSOD in the last 3 or 4 years?

I haven't. I have not had to do any reinstall of XP, I have not had any significant problems, I have not had a virus, I've had a smooth running computer hosting web pages, running CAD and GIS software, and playing games.

I call for an 'overrated' mod for the parent.