MS Says: 32 bit: NO HD FOR YOU!

[pofnlice]

true...unfortunately...

Having said that, I am slowly repartitioning my 32bit HD, it has gone from 10Gb to now 20Gb and phasing the monster known as XPSP2yadayadayadayadayadayadayadarev1782468646493425337503.0.000000000000000001 down. She is getting on well with ubuntu. Now I am even slowly phasing her into the world of console. I have to admit, she is starting to use linux adequately, even, dare I say, comfortable with it. The goal is obviously to get it down to 10 Gb, as she will not totally let go. That should leave about 1Mb free on the win part.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

So far there are only 3 things you can't use on Linux (except with Wine or Cedega) that you can on Window$:

1) Shockwave ... useless anyway, and you can run it through wine if you really really need to for some stupid reason

2) ActiveX ... thank goodness for this one ... who the fuck wants ActiveX (besides for playing online poker) ... fuck if you really want to you can run it through wine as well

3) Games. Really this is the toughest one on most people. Wine and Cedega help to a very minor extent. I personally don't play PC games anymore mostly because:
  a) you can't return them for a refund if they don't work ... console games you can
  b) you need DirectX and a good graphics card as well ... this means you will need to upgrade to Vi$ta sooner or later and a new expensive video card all for a small improvement in graphics

Thus there is no real reason not to switch.

[mobrien_12]

who would want to put vista on anything less than an intel or amd 64bit machine.

While I'm in agreement with AB on this one, let me turn this question around.

Let's, just for a second, ignore all the reasons why MS and Vista is .  
Why wouldn't anyone want to put Vista or (insert a heavy bloated OS) on a 32 Bit machine?

Being 64 Bits doesn't make the chip a lot faster unless you are running programs that use 64 bit numbers or REALLY REALLY large amounts of RAM  (several GB).  Scientific Computing and large Databases and some servers benefit, for example.  Some programs benefit a bit from the expanded instruction set of X86-64. Some run slightly slower under 64 bit mode.  

Check this link out.  It compares lots of Linux software running under 32 and 64 bit modes in athlon, pentium extreme, and Core Duo 2.

http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/22/0415251&mode=thread

[Aloone_Jonez]

Is it not possible then for someone to write a 32-bit driver to play HD stuff on XP?

If so the there's no real reason to upgrade to Vista at all.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Besides DirectX 10, of course.

[hm_murdock]

Is it not possible then for someone to write a 32-bit driver to play HD stuff on XP?

You mean the way everybody wrote USB drivers and DVD players for 95, even though MS was touting USB and DVD support in 98 as being a "new feature"?