Wow. A 64bit DOS machine. I've already got a 64-bit OS, BE. Heck, you can get a 64-bit version of Linux. Microsoft's playing caught up. : Just Kidding? I am truely glad to see they're trying to open the doors to their new OS, with providing us with compilers and such. I'm sure I'll recompile my stuff. Plus, the rumors of Open Windows . . . I'd like to see that source code.

Code like:

if not App_is_A_Microsoft_product then
begin
Generate_Random_GPF_Error_or_Page_Fault
Execute_Blue_Screen_of_Death
end;

:O

uhh BeOS uses a 64bit FILESYSTEM.. the OS itself is 32bit (as you cant have a 64bit OS on a 32bit CPU... get it?)

64 to 32 would be more exciting if it were like it was back in the day... Ah yes back when we added the Floating point Processor, we got the 287, and 387, "co-processors" disappeared and the real speed started to appear.

As it is 64 bit is going to really going to be just a fast way to emulate 32 bit for a while at least. The truth is 64 bit is hype right now. And in the future we can look forward to more data from shorter higher base numbers.

Base 2 is great, it is easy it is simple. 2 4 8 16 32 64, it is nice, now lets pretend that instead of using +.5v and 1v as our possiblities, we use -.5, 0, +5 we now get 3 9 27 81 243 729 and we have lowered the power consumption and heat out put... 600 mhz in a 8^2 config is fast now imagine 8^3 (8x faster, or 16x faster than a pentium at that speed) againe with out optimized instruction set you get fast emulation... but still a good deal.

base 4? 128x faster than current processors,

True analog? quantum computing? .09 die? Gold die? Bucky computing?
(i'm waitning for bucky computing the idea of a Carbon atome that can do base 128 computing (number of sides in a bucky) at any speed could be fun...

One last thought by the way... higher base computing really only wins if we learn to do more than simple yes, no computing...
if, then,
do, while,

For some reason the switch from 16 to 32-bit computing seemed more exciting than 32 to 64. I remember the 16 to 32 switch being very important, lots of talk about it on the ummm... BBS's.

32 to 64-bit computing gets in the news, but it has a kind of "who cares" aura about it.

Maybe not, but somebody has to start a tread.

At the time, Windows 3.1 was "Windows." Nobody knew what 16-bit and 32-bit meant, and when MS released Windows 95, it was all a bunch of mal-coded 16-bit and 32-bit programming, which caused many major problems. Everybody was trying to get things straight and figured out. In the processor world, 80286 to 80386 meant one of the largest speed increases around at that time and you could do so much more with a 386 and everybody was getting into it. Now, with all these advances so fast, everybody just kind of sits back and when their computer dies or doesen't do what they want, they get a new one, not many people aren't into the speed or the "suck up every last MHz unused" phase. Now, it's like all these 800MHz this 900MHz that, but theirs is equal to a PIII 500, but ours is like a PIII 900, but only on this application. It's all BS and nobody cares anymore.

I agree with the IDEA behind your post. There is way to much hype, sensationism, and marketing to wade through. We have to hunt around 10000+ products just to fine 1 that does everything we want in the real world, more than the hype (and we dont have that many products in the CPU world, so our options are limited)