It is still difficult to believe the speed and the adoptance of the 64-bit systems, especially in the world of Windows.
First of all, i have to confess, having the 32-bit windows system at home though my processor supports 64-bits. I mean there is no need to spend money on the system, which has so many problems with the current software. Yeap i am not just talking about the air, but the fact that i am facing each and every day on my job. I have “the luck” (with no alternative options) of using a Win2003 64-bit system at work, and let me say, that if i could, i would changed it for the good old 32-bit for sure. There way too many problems with programs written before such changes as the registry modifications of Wow64 and so on. I have such a big list of programs which are simply not compatible. Unfortunately for me as there are programs which i can avoid using (old GIMP versions and so on), there are a lot of internal programs and libraries which keep crashing the system and there is not much as i can do to correct them (no access or just a simple binary library to “use”).
Ok, i do respect the fact, that not a lot of developers are ready to spend the money on 64-bit Windows to get a monster, spending even more and more resources, but i am surprised to see so few professional (not home-brewed) applications being tested for the 64-bit – and it is the future, cause it is just a simple question of time, when intel and amd will decide to stop supporting 32-bits, not talking about Microsoft… The weirdest thing is the kind of difficulties one have to face when trying to have different .net applications running on .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0, i mean this is not a Longhorn(aka Vista), and there IS a need for support for it…
Anyway i hope to see more and more applications actually converting to the compatibility with the Windows 64-bit, 2 weeks ago finally a new version of the ITunes (that by everybody critisized 7.0) arrived, which finally allowed me to use the Itunes (the last 6.0x version even didnt allowed to proceed with the install process)…
Professional developers, its about time … =O)