Nearly half of Windows 7 installations are 64-bit

[WindowsStar]

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 :roflmao:

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.

+1 Very true!

 

[JMH]

Late last week, Microsoft published data from market researchers showing that nearly half of all Windows 7 PCs worldwide are running a 64-bit version of the OS. That's a dramatic increase from previous Windows versions: Only 11 percent of the Windows Vista installed base—and less than 1 percent of Windows —is 64-bit.

"As of June 2010, we see that 46 percent of all PCs worldwide running Windows 7 are running a 64-bit edition of Windows 7," a post to the Windows team blog reads. "That is, nearly half of all PCs running Windows 7 are running 64-bit."

Microsoft has already moved its server OSs to 64-bit, and it's widely thought that with Windows 8—the next client version of Windows due in two years—the software giant might finally jettison 32-bit code for good on the PC desktop, as well. Still, 64-bit versions of Windows on the desktop offer few meaningful advantages over 32-bit versions, aside from support for dramatically more memory. Whereas 32-bit systems can utilize up to 4GB of RAM (actually a bit less in Windows), 64-bit systems can utilize a lot more. For example, Windows 7 Professional and higher can address up to 192GB of RAM.

More -
Microsoft Touts 64-Bit Adoption of Windows 7

 

[Dave76]

but we'll all still have local hard drives, yes? maybe, cloud will merely be an useful option.

worldwide average broadband speeds will have to increase a lot before we are forced into cloud-cuckoo land.

we'll have super-ssd's by then - roll on the future!

I hope it's that way, it only makes sense, thus the problem MS sometimes doesn't.

We have 'pretty good' SSDs now

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.

Agreed, it wouldn't make any kind of business sense to go totally cloud based.
Improved cloud based I can see for the appropriate areas. The internet just couldn't handle it, especially in some global areas.