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Microsoft has an offer good til the end of the month to obtain the 64 bit OS for a great price as a download. It requires quite a bit of a technical challenge to install and everyone here knows that I am a tech zero...but cute! Should I install? What are the upsides and downsides? Will I need to marry a technical genius to keep it running? Is there one available? A dedicated MS User

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Sometimes true leaders must boldly proclaim a new direction to their followers, then walk off a cliff to prove their determination. For me, that explains Microsoft's introduction of the awkwardly named Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. This new version of Windows will almost certainly never attract more than the tiniest sliver of existing Windows users. And it will evaporate as soon as Microsoft delivers the next full Windows revamp, a long-overdue project code-named Longhorn, in the second half of 2006. But I still think Microsoft is doing the right thing. Here's why. Personal computing is undergoing...

Microsoft (MSFT) on Monday plans to make its biggest push yet to popularize 64-bit computing on everyday computers. At a conference here, Chairman Bill Gates is expected to announce the general availability of the first desktop version of Windows to support 64-bit processing chips, which can access bigger chunks of memory and move data around faster than 32-bit chips in wide use on PCs since the 1980s. About 2,800 hardware developers are expected here at the Microsoft-sponsored Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHec) this week to hear where Microsoft is driving the tech industry, and learn what they can do. The...

Advanced Micro Devices has quietly trotted out a version of its Athlon 64 chip that provides a little less performance than earlier models but only costs about half as much. The new Athlon 64 3000+ runs at 2GHz, the same as the existing Athlon 64 3200+, but it only comes with a 512KB secondary cache, according to an AMD spokesman. The 3200+ features a 1MB cache. A cache is a pool of memory integrated into the processor for rapid data access. In general, large caches lead to better performance. AMD, however, prices the Athlon 64 3000+ at $218 in quantities...

Itanium and Opteron contrasted Letter What are the options for Intel? By The Letternan: Saturday 09 November 2002, 10:04 THE COMPARISON SPECS on Itanium 3 and Opteron here look pretty good. This appears to show both processors passing the current fastest server chip by a significant lead. However, for x86 code, Opteron looks like it will hit the market as fast as the fastest x86 processor while Itanium 3 is a joke on x86 code. It is too bad that there are not specs available on Yamhill because I have a very strong suspicion that it was killed, not because...

Intel Rubbishes AMD's Hybrid Plans DATE: 09/12/2002 The head of Intel Corp's server chip division rubbished AMD's 32/64-bit hybrid processor proposition yesterday, saying that if it's such a good idea, why hasn't anyone done it before? Mike Fister, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's enterprise, speaking after a keynote speech at the vendor's developer forum in San Jose, questioned the logic of supporting both 64-bit and 32-bit computing on the same processor. Advanced Micro Devices Inc is pushing its hybrid approach as a way for corporations to smooth their transition from legacy 32-bit applications to 64-bit computing. Fister...

Intel says nothing these days THE EDITOR of the High Tech Strategist claims that AMD's Hammer chips will give the firm as much as a three to four year lead over competing technology from Intel. Fred Hick is quoted in the the August 5th edition of the Wall Street financial weekly, pushed out by Barron's. His argument is that the AMD Hammer family is backward compatible with 32-bit applications as well as having the ability to run specially compiled 64-bit code. Intel's Itanium, by contrast, has a special instruction set and while it will run 32-bit instruction code this is...

AMD confirms IBM DB2 Hammer support Corporate migration easier, says IBM By Mike Magee: Tuesday 30 July 2002, 20:58 IBM'S DB2 DATABASE for Linux will be supported on AMD's Opteron (Hammer) processors, confirming benchmarks posted on c't magazine a few weeks back. AMD confirmed the story in a release which said a DB2 database using SuSE Linux was successfully ported to X86-64 technology in just a few days. The news is good for AMD and indicates positiive application software support for its Opteron servers, due to be launched next year. The chip firm said that using X86-64 architecture will mean...

Linus Torvalds prays Intel will adopt Yamhill And so adopt AMD's X86-64 By INQUIRER staff: Monday 29 July 2002, 11:26 A POSTING BY Linus Torvalds on the LINUX KERNEL newsgroup yesterday has him praying that Intel will adopt its secret "Yamhill" project and turn to the ways of X86-64 righteousness. Torvalds, who had a key part to play in Transmeta's fortunes at startup, says in the post that Linux developers are "generally praying that AMD's X86-64 succeeds in the market." That, he says, would force Intel to make Yamhill its standard 64-bit platform and allow for improvements in the Linux...

Advanced Micro Devices is building a 64-bit field of dreams. As Intel accelerates the launch date of its 3GHz Pentium 4 chip, arch rival AMD continues to build the foundation for "ClawHammer." The 64-bit Athlon processor is expected to come out early next year, giving desktop PCs a performance similar to that of workstations used in research labs at DaimlerChrysler or NASA. To make sure ClawHammer arrives on solid footing, AMD is working with a long list of partners who will build that hardware and software that can take advantage of such a chip. The company has already sent tens...

Might Apple ditch PowerPC for Satanic chips? Citizen Smith Resolution wavering? By Tony Smith: Monday 22 July 2002, 10:17 IS APPLE SERIOUSLY thinking about switching processor platforms? There's been no end of speculative answers to that question over the past few years, but Apple itself has been resolute on the point: no we're not. That stance may have changed, if comments made by CEO Steve Jobs at the company's quarterly earnings confab. Asked whether Apple is now mooting a move to x86 chips, Jobs noted that that couldn't happen until the vast majority of its users and - more importantly...

Column Heigh-Ho Celeron! By Andrew Busigin: Thursday 11 July 2002, 19:14 INTEL'S LATEST developments around future Celeron performance make for an interest study in marketing. It appears that once again, Intel Marketing folks are steering the engineering team, and it shouldn't surprise anyone, since the Celeron has always been a marketing phenomenon more than an engineering product. See Intel to shift P4 Celerons to Northwood core History Lesson The origin of the Celeron, for those of you more recently come to the party, was a marketing coup for Intel, whereby they managed to create an artificial segmentation of their CPU...

Big backing for Opteron, if true By Adamson Rust: Tuesday 09 July 2002, 09:27 THE WALL ST JOURNAL could hardly be described as a rumour mongering site so the rumour it mongered yesterday in a story it wrote about Intel's Itanic has to be taken more seriously than, say, any British publication whatsoever. The Wall St Journal has been known to fact check a story so much that the hacks feel they're being given the third degree. Yesterday, a long and worthy piece about whether big corporations will follow up their IA-32 server farms with IA-64 "big tin" terminated with...