[AccessD] Windows 7 64 bit

Being that I'm barely getting my cable bill covered this week, I can't
donate to Shrew right now.  Though I will be pushing for donations to
anyone I recommend it too.  Personally I'd love to just hack into Cisco
and route some of their cashflow to Shrew! LOL (for those feds watching
the internet, that was sarcastic humor....we all know that Cisco is
unhackable <rolling eyes>)

I'm in a little bit of a battle with my boss over 64 bit.  He thinks I'm
trying to be 'too cutting edge', which is a danger in the IT world.  You
can't throw the latest and greatest thing into a production environment
without expecting some serious backlash.  The problem is, 64 bit is not
new. It's been around for a while.  I don't think you can even buy a 32
bit processor.  You aren't getting a double performance increase between
32 bit and 64 bit (you didn't between 16 and 32 either) for most things.
It's more like putting premium gas in your car instead of regular.
There are 3 arenas where 64 really comes into play.  First, true number
crunching processes designed for a 64 bit processor.  Memory increases,
is the second.  32 bit is maxed at 4 gig, and it doesn't even use all of
that.  The third arena is virtualization.  A 64 bit host runs 32 bit
vm's smoother.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit

Is a good link about the differences.  Where there is going to be a huge
yank from the industry, IMO, is going to be in about 2 years.  Right
now, the typical home user buying a new machine, or company buying a
user computer, you are averaging 2 to 3 gigs.  Most of what I am buying
now is 4 gigs, which is maxed in 32 bit.  In about 2 years, we'll start
seeing a much stronger demand for memory levels over 4 gigs, which will
only work in a 64 bit environment.  This hasn't happened since the
switch from 16 to 32 bit, so most of us in the tech world don't think
back that far (heck, I wasn't in computers back then).  But there were
growing pains going from 16 bit to 32 bit, and back then, hardware was
far more expensive, so the yank wasn't as hard.  Right now, fiscally, it
doesn't cost an arm and a leg more to get a 8 gig memory system running
64 bit OS/Processor, then to get 4 gig on a 32 bit OS running on a 64
bit processor.  When the desire for higher levels of RAM grows to a
boiling point, there will be a huge shift to 64 bit, and there are going
to be a lot of people playing catchup.

Drew

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 4:09 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Windows 7 64 bit

Hi Drew

Thanks for these useful tips!

We are currently struggling with a move including some 16-bit apps and
the good old Program Manager (progman.exe, remember that?) which the
client just loves (and I must say it fits her purpose very well, it is
not just a crazy idea) to 64-bit Windows 7. That is, of course, not
possible except if you run virtual Windows XP environment. 

This XP environment is just a tightly integrated Remote Desktop and a
Virtual PC running WinXP. At least launch times for apps are slower with
this.
A major challenge is that the machine must log in to a NetWare server.
Novell doesn't seem to bother for a 64-bit client, so only a "Novell
Client 2" is available with very limited features. But  with this you
can attach your network drives and that's what counts.
However, attached drives in the 64-bit host OS are supposed to be
"automatically" linked to the virtual machine. They are, but whenever,
in the virtual machine, you open a drive attached to the NetWare server,
the host OS breaks down - completely with Blue Screen of Death - I
haven't seen this for years. To get around this you have to install the
normal 32-bit Novell Client 4.xx in the virtual machine and let it
attach the networked drives directly.

As I don't see any true reason to run 64-bit - it just happened to be
installed on the machine, and I have yet to see a 64-bit desktop
application with a difference - I strongly consider to rebuild it with
32-bit Win7 because a cd with this was included with the machine -
perhaps just to check out the PCMover from the other thread.

By the way, did you donate a small amount to the excellent Shrew people?
We rarely do such, I must admit, but we try to persuade clients to do so
and sometimes we just add some amount to the invoice because clients
prefer invoices rather than receipts for donations.

/gustav

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