Why bother with 32-bit Longhorn? | The Coffeehouse

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

dotnetjunkie wrote:

footballism wrote:
Athlon 2500+
It's much cheaper than Intel Pentium 4

I'm sorry to break it to you but they set you up with a really old pc...

Athlon CPU's can only be bought second-hand, they aren't manufactured since, what is it, a year?! ago already!!!
AMD only has Sempron, Athlon64 and Opteron CPU's in its product line.

On top of that, the 2500+ is a really old CPU, it's now worth only $25 at most!!!

Finally, it was not very sensible of you to still buy a 32-bit pc, with the risk of being ripped off by buying old, obsolete hardware! Can I ask how much you have paid for this second-hand pc that you thought was new?

64-bit systems are so cheap nowadays, you can buy one with an Athlon64 CPU for less than $500!

I'm not sure what you think a old CPU is, but a 2500+ is simply fine for a majority of what anybody wants to do. If you have extra money, you should spend it on memory and keep the CPU until you are truly ready to move to 64-bit.

And, a quick look at www.pricewatch.com shows me that a 2500+ is $81-89 not the expected $25. I'm running fine on a 2 year old 2600+ in hopes that someday, soon, an XP 3200+ will drop below $100 so I can boost my CPU and finally run my PC3200 memory at 400MHz instead of the slower 333MHz.

BTW, the cheapest Athlon 64 is $99 and that will probably require a new mobo and probably new memory. I can't say for sure since I have been holding off for a while, but I'm guessing you can't use the same memory. Even if you can use PC3200, I'd rather not buy the slowest, crappiest Athlon64 if I don't need it yet.

That said, I played Doom3 and HL2 just fine. How? The bottleneck is the video card, not the CPU. The next generation of games may start to tax the CPU again with physics, but graphics are handled just fine with newer video cards. The CPU is generally not anywhere near fully utilized.

eagle

This thread says more about the 2% of C9 membership that participate in the coffeehouse then it does about the future of computing.

We’re moving to 64bit computing, lead, follow or get out of the way.

philip1987

I have a 32-bit CPU. If Longhorn was only 64-bit, that would make me be much more inclined to switch to Linux or OS X (yes, OS X; Now that Apple will make it run on x86, I hope they'll make it allowable to be on a non-Mac computer). I'd like to have Longhorn and once I got a 64-bit processor (which I doubt will be real soon) I'd probably buy Longhorn, unless I'm too hooked on Linux or Mac.

Spitfire15

Why bother indeed. I have a 64-bit CPU, so I can get x64 on it or when Longhorn does become a 64-bit only OS, then I can be happy, and not cross to 32-bit again. 64-bit is a bit slow in Games and other Apps atm, anyway.

Loadsgood
What is your answer?

sbc wrote:
How many can tell the difference between DDR 266 and DDR 333 RAM? Not your average office worker.

How does one tell the difference between the two? (Other than the name)

I think that they should lock Longhorn into 64bit since its specs are so high, people should be forced to upgrade from their low spec computers to 64bit. I won't buy Longhorn in CD form anyway, I'm going to buy a new laptop for Longhorn when it is released (I pretty much have to since I've had my current laptop for about 3 years) I think retailers should get the ball rolling and sell only 64bit computers for now so people would have already dumped 32bit by Longhorn time. Either way we know that Microsoft will be releasing 32bit and 64bit versions of Longhorn, the OS after it will be all 64bit.

Update now before it's too late!
Loadsgood.

sbc
GW R/Me

Loadsgood wrote:
sbc wrote:How many can tell the difference between DDR 266 and DDR 333 RAM? Not your average office worker.

How does one tell the difference between the two? (Other than the name)

I think that they should lock Longhorn into 64bit since its specs are so high, people should be forced to upgrade from their low spec computers to 64bit. I won't buy Longhorn in CD form anyway, I'm going to buy a new laptop for Longhorn when it is released (I pretty much have to since I've had my current laptop for about 3 years) I think retailers should get the ball rolling and sell only 64bit computers for now so people would have already dumped 32bit by Longhorn time. Either way we know that Microsoft will be releasing 32bit and 64bit versions of Longhorn, the OS after it will be all 64bit.

Update now before it's too late!
Loadsgood.

Good way of getting people into other OS's that do support 32 bit. They won't have Longhorn for 64 bit PC's only - it would be financial suicide. Not everyone can afford to buy a new computer everytime Microsoft releases a new OS. I am sure many are still on Windows 98 and Pentium III. Perfectly fine for what they want, even gaming and broadband internet. Plus there is all the software people have bought over the years, which may add up to more than the cost of the computer.

You can have high spec and 32 bit. Just look at Dell's XPS and Alienwares Area-51. $2000 is hardly pocket change for most users (may be 5 years + before they buy a new PC). Until all the software people use is 64 bit, people will still use 32 bit, or a hybrid 32/64 bit processor. If the software people have does not run on Longhorn, people will not buy it.

What about laptop users? 64 bit isn't that common on them and laptops are far more expensive than desktops and the upgrade cycle is much longer (4 years or more). Plus 32 bit processors are far more power efficient. Ultralight mobile laptops with 64 bit and a long battery life is just not possible at the moment.

Perhaps there should be a poll on Channel9 about 64 bit Longhorn, i.e.

Should Windows Longhorn be 64 bit only?
Yes
No

eagle

YES, but they will wast time and money on a 32bit Longhorn for ONE reason.

daSmirnov

sbc wrote:
Perhaps there should be a poll on Channel9 about 64 bit Longhorn, i.e.

Should Windows Longhorn be 64 bit only?
Yes
No

Or logo program idea. All new machines that want the logo have to be 64-bit.

Mike Dimmick

I was looking at the roadmappery yesterday, as a result of Apple's announcements. The Pentium M won't be getting EM64T until late 2006, according to Wikipedia, with the 'Merom' chip. Not being able to run even on brand new notebooks would be a big own-goal - a 32-bit Longhorn is a necessity.

Speaking of Apple, it's interesting that their first cut of OS X for Intel will be a 32-bit operating system too. At least, that's how I read Apple's Universal Binary Programming Guidelines [PDF, 1.5MB].