Windows Vista - 64 bit in the Mainstream

Posted By: Charles | Aug 14th @ 9:46 AM

Gary Schare and Bruce Burns sit down (well, sort of, Bruce stands, Gary leans) with us to talk about the sudden uptake of the latest Windows 64 bit client OS. It's very encouraging that Windows 64 is finding its way onto consumer client systems and into mainstream computing. This spike in uptake also poses some challenges for ISVs who are not 64 bit "ready". 32 bit Windows applications should just work on 64 bit Windows, right? Well, sort of. Tune in.

Tags: Windows Vista

Rating:

Views (54,018)

Comments (27)

Downloads

aL_
mm.. linq.. *arrggha*

i love vista but the inability to load unsigned dirvers just sucks.. thats the only reason i dont go 64 bit right now :/

its not like vista64 cant load em either, its just that someone decided that it shouldnt be allowed even if i know what im doing.. thats erally user unfreindly.. it the exactly the kind of thing microsoft haters bring up when the say that vista thinks its better than its user.

could there please be an opttion to load unsigned drivers for every boot?

wil2300
Super #

I have recently installed WinXP 64 bit and with the exception of some minor tweaks and driver issue (actually, I was just too lazy to fix the last device as I don't care for it) - I am happy with it. However, many programs were and are still being written for 32 bit systems, so if there was supposed to be better performance via xp64, I really haven't seen it and I even upped my ram to 4g on my laptop.

I am however, very interested in a converted Server 2008 to Workstation because from what people have said, it is what vista should have been.

Charles
Welcome Change

In reply to wil2300

#Aug 14th @ 11:44 AM

"I am however, very interested in a converted Server 2008 to Workstation because from what people have said, it is what vista should have been."

Actually, this is entirely incorrect and doesn't make a lot of sense... Vista and Windows Server 2008 are fundamentally EXACTLY the same (minus the obvious server/client specific features and componentry that makes sense in each context - the core OS is the same OS. The differences are in tuning, security policy and shell for the most part - yes, server core is a server-only construct as are other server-related components and features - but, again......., they are fundamentally the same......).

I don't understand this "Windows Server 2008 on the client" nonsense. It's a server OS, built for serving. Again, it is VERY similar to Vista architecturally. In fact, Vista and 2008 come from the same sources......

C

dnjake

Adobe Photoshop is one of the few commonly used client applications that actually has some prospect to add real value with the extra memory that 64 bit clients make possible. The fact that they are just getting around to 64 bit support should tell you something about how little real value most customers can expect from all that extra memory. Of course, once all the compatibility issues for 64 bit have been dealt with, there will be no reason not to use 64 bit. But only users of very selected applications are going to see any real value from it.

As Charles points out, many core does not come for free. Few companies are going to invest in parallel processing unless they are going to be able to show their customers some real value from it. People who think advances are adopted just because technophiles think they are great should take a look at the history of IPV6. Today, many core also does not come for free from a power perspective. People who expect users to burn that power just to make some lights flash faster should take a look at the history of the Pentium 4.

Borum.NET

Charles, while I agree that they are fundamentally the same operating systems there seems to be a big difference in the user experience between Vista and Windows Server 2008; meaning that users on the server operating system find it more stable and responsive. I guess this is because of the different tuning (as you mentioned) and actual components that are loaded in memory - or that Vista is not tuned to the workloads they throw at it.

I run Windows Server 2008 x64 on a box with 8 GB of RAM and am truly enjoying the benefit of more RAM (and it even plays nice with Call of Duty 4). There is no way I'm ever going to install Vista (again) on my box and it's by far the best development setup I've seen (you've got to love the combination of VS 2008 SP1, .NET 3.5 SP1, IIS 7 and SQL Server 2008).

See you at the PDC (wahoo).

figuerres
???

In reply to aL_

#Aug 14th @ 11:09 AM

I just think the "why not load unsigned drivers" is rather silly / foolish and not the right way to go.

if it were up to me *ALL* drivers from any vendor for *ANY* OS would have a digital signature as a common standard.

I see a whole lot of upside / user benefit to signed software and really no downside (if the vendor does thier bit)

for example if a driver crashes / BSOD's a system the vendor info should be there to tell the user who to complain to, the author's company that released the buggy code.
today if a driver crashes a system on windows folks blame microsoft.
what does a Linux user (not a developer a *USER*) do?

and why can't a driver be signed?
let me see, I paid say $500.00 for a video card, the vendor is selling them by the 100,000's so they could not afford $300 to $2000 to sign drivers for that hardware ??

even a cheap USB dongle device like a memory stick.... so an OEM like say SanDisk is going to sell like 2 or 3 million times say $30 buks each... so they can't afford to pony up?

look at the cruddy Nvidia drivers that were first out for Vista, and other hardware that had / has buggy drivers
why should we pay top dollar to companies that want to skimp on QA and defect tracking ??

WHY?

why should Microsoft have to scan crash dumps trying to figure out who trashed the kernel ??
while MSFT can still be a centeral depot of data the dispatch of the crash dump to the vendor should be quick and easy so that MSFT can focus on the OS , not on sluthing who donnit.

does that start to put signing in a different light?

matthews

In reply to figuerres

#Aug 14th @ 2:25 PM

The problem isn't IHVs; they can get a driver signed no problem. It's sort of "homebrew" drivers; people make drivers for USB devices sometimes or maybe even run say an nvidia driver with a modified INF. The former isn't usually a problem; unless thye're written by an idiot, they should always be done in user mode (granted, there are idiots out there that must like the torture and crashiness of writing kernel mode USB drivers...). The latter is a bit of an annoyance for me since I get my laptop's video drivers off laptopvideo2go since Dell's are always woefully out of date. Still, WHQL drivers are still available there, just sans the modified INF which means my chipset won't be supported on every driver.

tarpido
.Neter

ENd of last year I built high end desktop and decided to have vista ultimate 64 on it. In start i not felt much issues cause i not have direct comparision to 32 bit vista. Now as i getting more familiar i feel my system performs slow compare to 32 bit vista OS. Boot time is also slower 64 bit.

Apart from that i get issues with application compatibility on 64 bit. Just recently i really felt that i made mistake by having 64 bit when i found lot of media center plugins are not ready for 64 bit specially recently Tv Tonic have a NBC Olympics plugin for vista media center only for 32 bit. Few days back i was reading on channel 9 or channel 8 about Microsoft's new utility called steadystate. I was excited with its features and to my disappointment that too was only for 32 bit.

So now after having 64 bit for more than 6 months i feel like only advantage i've got is having more than 3gb RAM.
How can I expect 3rd party apps compatible with 64 bit when some of Microsoft's own apps are not ready for 64 bit.

tho

In reply to matthews

#Aug 14th @ 6:46 PM

I must point out here, that the signed driver requirement does not equal a WHQL requirement. Third party verified certification will suffice, which in your example would be a nvidia certificate. Modified inf files do not invalidate that type of signature on a device driver.