Nearly half of Windows 7 installations are 64-bit

Thorn8369 said:

I say Windows 8 (or a special Windows 7.5 edition) should be released as 64 bit only OS. It has it's advantages to such a gamble, however, a gamble that would strongly rely on the hardware manufacturers releasing good quality drivers.

Say hello to Vista mark 2.... you force 64 bit on people, people are going to whinge.

Personally, I agree with you that it would be a good move to make. Look at the whole XP thing, MS are just saying flat out "No. We're not making our products for it any more" (IE9) in an effort to drag people kicking and screaming into 2010. Look how many people are still clinging on though. Not even people who are just saying "XP does the job, I don't need anything else" its people saying "XP is the best OS ever and I will never upgrade, MS have broken Vista and Win 7" despite having never ever tried it! I think that when (and it is when) MS drop 32 bit support, you will see the same thing happen again.

Thorn8369 said:

Windows 7 will eventually be the new WinXP in terms of user base not wanting to change.

Thorn

I may well be one of those people I was just bashing if Windows 8 goes cloud based

Well word on the grapevine says that Win8 will be cloud based, and Microsoft are firm on such desires to keep it so.

severedsolo said:

Thorn8369 said:

Windows 7 will eventually be the new WinXP in terms of user base not wanting to change.

Thorn

I may well be one of those people I was just bashing if Windows 8 goes cloud based

I hear you, Martin; I will be one of those, too.

What do we know of the Pros/Cons of a having a full cloud based OS? All that "cloud" based bullshit is not really of interest to me, perhaps it is a good time to do some reading on it.

severedsolo said:

Thorn8369 said:

Windows 7 will eventually be the new WinXP in terms of user base not wanting to change.

Thorn

I may well be one of those people I was just bashing if Windows 8 goes cloud based

I'm with you on that one. Not really excited about having everything on the web.

MS will have another Vista like bad reception if it's only cloud based.


Back on topic,

It's time to move to 64 bit. I've been using it for 4 years now, no issues.

Same things were said against the 16bit vs 32bit change. We survived that.

There's no way Windows 8 will be able to abolish local storage, I mean you've got a fair number of people like me that store terabytes of data on their HDDs. With current average Internet speeds and bandwidth limits, it's simply not practical to be transferring that amount of data over the Internet. Not to mention, there is a definite limit to what should and should not be cloud-based. For example, having email, RSS, maybe saved games (Steam Cloud), some Office documents, etc, on the cloud would be beneficial to most people. But you would not want downloads on the cloud (then you're not even really downloading them), you would not want a lot of sensitive data on the cloud, you would usually not want virtual machines on the cloud, or anything that currently doesn't require Internet access. Windows will lose MOST of their vast market share if Windows 8 FORCES you to have ALL your data on the cloud.

And I agree that everyone will survive the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit. In fact, all things considered, everything will be easier once that transition is fully complete, because developers won't have to struggle with compatibility for both architectures. As it is, every driver out there has to have two versions each for Vista and 7.

I agree with you. The hold up between 32 to 64 is old hardware. As people (like me) upgrade their hardware, they will move to 64 bit.