On 2/17/07, Jason Stephenson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Typical end users as defined before don't really care about the differences. As long as they can do more or less what they want to do with the computer, they won't really notice the difference.
I think you and I actually agree. I'm not saying people-doing-ordinary-tasks-like-reading-email-browsing-the-web-writing-letters-looking-at-pictures-and-calculating-their-taxes actually care about memory models or address word size or any of that crap. They generally don't. Ignoramuses might get into penis-length contests because 64 is bigger than 32, but that's about it. However, people-doing-ordinary-tasks-like-reading-email-browsing-the-web-writing-letters-looking-at-pictures-and-calculating-their-taxes do care about what they can do with their pee cee. There are things they can do on a 32-bit machine which they cannot do on a 16-bit machine. They don't understand why, but they know they can play digital music while writing a term paper on their new Dell, while their old Apple ][ or IBM-PC Model 5150 couldn't handle that.
I'm not going to argue that 64 bits won't make a difference, just that typical home and office users won't notice until it enables something that no one has done before, or not done well.
Right. Exactly. I'm wondering what those things might be. What will x86-64 let people-doing-ordinary-tasks-like-reading-email-browsing-the-web-writing-letters-looking-at-pictures-and-calculating-their-taxes do that the limitations of their x86-32 computer prevented them from doing?
Eventually, you won't be able to buy mainstream hardware with anything less than 64 bit CPUs, and from looking at the latest Dell PC Catalogs that I get, that time appears to be now or very soon.
Indeed, that is very much happening. It's practically impossible to buy an IBM-PC-compatible these days that is not x86-64 capable. Some laptops are about the only exceptions. So the hardware is there. However, most of them are still running a 32-bit OS. Be it Windows or Linux or Mac OS, most of the installations are still 32-bit, even if the OS has a 64-bit variant available. In the 'doze world, this is largely because of the support and compatibility nightmares described previously. 64-bit Windows causes lots and lots of problems, and there's currently very little benefit to be had by people-doing-ordinary-tasks-like-reading-email-browsing-the-web-writing-letters-looking-at-pictures-and-calculating-their-taxes. So, from that standpoint, the 64-bit potential for the people-doing-ordinary-tasks-like-reading-email-browsing-the-web-writing-letters-looking-at-pictures-and-calculating-their-taxes market is still untapped. Now, let's just say, hypothetically, that something materializes in the Linux world which needs a 64-bit system to work, and is also compelling to people-doing-ordinary-tasks-like-reading-email-browsing-the-web-writing-letters-looking-at-pictures-and-calculating-their-taxes. Maybe it's a really cool fully-immersive VR world (which will, of course, immediately be used for sexual purposes). If it's only available for Linux, then suddenly, people-doing-ordinary-tasks-like-reading-email-browsing-the-web-writing-letters-looking-at-pictures-and-calculating-their-taxes will have a *compelling reason* to check Linux out. And maybe, just maybe, they'll discover all the other benefits of FLOSS while they're at it. That's a so-called "killer app". Entire industries have risen and fallen on such things in the past. As long as Windows sucks at x86-64 and Linux doesn't suck at x86-64, this question will remain very interesting to me. Am I the only one (aside from, perhaps, ESR) who thinks this way? -- Ben _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
