New Steam survey results

what neliz said in a graph:



64-bit Windows really accelerated this past month.

 

The day when 32-bit OSes die altogether will be a very happy day for me.

 

I've saved copies of them to light in a bonfire. Though if this step comes with Win8, there will be some "WinHate"

 

Here you go:

 

How perfect, Fellix!

 

why is that ? 64bit windows os's have been around for what 5-6 years now. I don't think many programs and hardware don't have 64bit drivers at this point or in another 2 years or so the vast majority of this minority will even work or be in use.

I've moved to 64 bit awhile ago and the amount of programs i'veh ad problems running are few and far inbetween.

In fact it seems ms is pushing OEM's to put 64bit verisons of the os on all prebuilt pcs.

 

Because there will probably still be some weird banking app that will have issues and an outrage will ensue.
There's also still folks with CRT's and 32-bit CPU's who won't be able to run the "latest and greatest" and will be disappointed

Hardly, especially in the "cheap" segment (below €500) the common OS is 7-32. My brother bought a new notebook last month, Choice between Acer, Asus, HP Compaq and MSI. All had Win7-32 and between 3 and 4 GB of RAM.
On the business side of OEM machines, Vista/7 32 bit is still the DEFAULT choice for OS installation, you can select 64 bit, but as long as a company like HP or IBM doesn't make it the default choice, we're fighting an uphill battle.

That and there's still some big customers we have that haven't yet qualified their applications for 64 bit environments (one of the Netherlands top insurance companies.)

I just want it to die. (I bought a webcam last week that wasn't 7 Compatible, let alone 7-64.. it's great for my parents.)

 

I'd say a bigger impetus for OEMs possibly defaulting to a 64 bit version of Win7 is that gives them an opportunity to upsell more high margin overpriced RAM. I don't see MS pushing it either way.

Regards,
SB

 

I think the asus G71 notebook with mobility HD5870 defaulted to win7-32 on the ordering page.. it has 8 ****ing gigs of ram.

 

When I sold computers people got it through their heads that more gigs of ram = faster system, more so than processor or graphics chips. I take it thats still the case?

 

Yes!

BTW MS was giving bigger discounts for 64bit OS, but that was in Win XP x64 times, I'm not sure now ...

 

so they can stay on win 7 until they are able to port it to 64bit. Also at this point they have had win xp 64 bit , vista 64bit and win 7 64bit to get the app working.

Also assuming 2012 for win 8 i doubt there will be many people if any at all that want to run win 8 on 32bit cpus. When was the last 32bit cpu sold ? 3 or 4 years ago ? So we are looking at 5old pcs at that point that will most likely have a slew of other problems running the os than 64bit.

My cheap hp dm3z for $450 came with home pro 64bit.

But we aren't talking about today. We are talking about 2 or 3 years into the future.

 

No need to even do that if the Virtual XP in business versions of Win7 is indicative of a trend by MS for how to deal with backwards compatability problems.

The only reason a future version of Windows would "need" a 32 bit version is if there's still a significant install base of machines without 64 bit extensions (my Tablet PC is one of those with only a Core Duo NOT a Core 2 Duo) that want to run and are capable of running a new version of Windows.

Does Atom have 64 bit extensions?

Regards,
SB

 

Some of them do. Basically, newer Atoms support 64 bits, including Atom 230, 330, and those new "Pineview" varieties (Atom D410/D510/N270/N280). All Atom Zxxx series do NOT support 64 bits.

However, 64 bits Windows are larger because they need both 64 bits and 32 bits DLLs. This may cause problems on some netbooks.

 

And that's the issue, M$ just has way more customers than oh, say Apple. When Apple decides to dump everything (PPC) and move to x64 it can do that because their amount of support would be limited and they get the idea that to entice upgrade, you have to make it cheap.

You've seen in the past what general outrage ensues when M$ tries something different. And since they don't control the hardware (see the 32bit Atoms) they're still fighting ghosts of the past. "What do you mean, My one year old netbook can't run 64-bit?"

 

In three years, if there are still a significant number of users without 64-bit hw they can continue using Win7. If the keep-xp-alive petition is anything to go by, some people believe an 8 year old OS still works fine.

Even if Win8 is 64-bit only we'll still have WOW64 with us for many, many years and that's a much bigger thorn because it affects forward compatibility. I'm still amazed WOW64 works as well as it does frankly.

 

Tens of minutes to break most people's passwords ! I'm in to that .

 

I think public outcry and the potential for it to absolutely ruin your OS sales would be something MS can't avoid looking at. Even if all CPUs sold from this point forward had 64 bit extensions.

After all just look at the outcry over Vista, despite almost all the snags being due to 3rd party drivers. And then even after that the continued outcry from XP diehards that Vista still sucked despite the fact that once 3rd parties released solid drivers all issues disappeared.

That said, I have far more hope that the next version of windows might finally drop 32 bit... But I have the feeling we'll have Vista Irrational Outcry redux if they do...

Regards,
SB

 

In three years, what do you think the minimum (mass market) density of DRAMs is going to be? Think you will be able to buy a PC will less than 4G? How about 8G?

-Charlie

 

I think that's (4 gb) likely even if we ignore netbooks. Absolutely for 8 gb.