On Mon, Apr 09, 2007 at 05:20:34PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote: > > The fact that Microsoft has chosen to remove win64 completely from the > > retail > > boxes for Vista is very significative. > > No, they include it in ultimate (it has both DVDs)
Ultimate is not targetted at the consumer market. > and they will mail it > to any customer for cost of shipping it if you want 64bit instead. So you have to buy the retail CD, then send your request for a 64bit version, and wait a week or so without being able to use what you just bought? How many people are going to do that? > I > think they mainly did it to avoid tech support calls when something > doesn't work for 64bit. They did it because it's not ready. If they were confident that they had a usable [1] product, they wouldn't make users jump through hoops to get it, since they know perfectly that they need to increase their win64 userbase. [1] and the requirements for win32 vista were already quite low, it seems > > It doesn't really matter. If we win the 64bit battle, when microsoft wants > > to > > migrate to 64-bit, they'll find that this niche is already occupied, and > > that > > the reference API is another one. Then they can clone us if they want to > > try > > something :-) > > Well I think users of applications like solidworks, lightwave, maya, > etc, just might use win64 and be quite happy with it. Not a huge > market, but not nothing either. That's fine. And they can have servers too. They're just not ready for the consumer market, in which you have to support a gazillon of hardware devices whose drivers or specs are not under their control. > I doubt this will be small enough that > linux can automatically win the 64bit OS market. And if people start > demanding 64bit support they will find a way to get a machien that does > work with 64bit windows and get the applications they want. There's no demand for it. The average user is not like a free software developer. They don't want to try something that's barely tested and has serious problems just because. All their apps are 32-bit, so they gain almost nothing in compensation. > > Yes. And we're backwards compatible (wine can run win32 binaries) too. The > > real problem is, can they be compatible with x86_64-linux-gnu api ? > > Why would they care to be? That isn't their market. If x86_64-linux-gnu is stablished as the new reference api, well, they'll be forced to. -- Robert Millan My spam trap is [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note: this address is only intended for spam harvesters. Writing to it will get you added to my black list. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
