[dba-Tech] The latest from "Microsoft 365 admin center"

[Stuart McLachlan]

You miss the point entirely.32bit *systems* may no longer be supported, but that's not 
surprising.- there are vanishingly few of them left in the wild.

It's not even the few machines still running 32 bit Windows (almost all would be 64bit 
machine anyway).

32bit applications are not going away any time soon, there are too many of them in daily use 
out there.

With the advent of Win64, 16 bit applications were no longer supported. 
32bit applications will continue to be supported as long as Windows is 64bit -

You won't see 32bit applications disappear completely until Win128 gets widely adopted :)

This is just about MS makng the default intallation of OFFICE, 64bit.

It's actually quite reasonable - just a bit of a PITA for people using older Access applications 
written on the assumption of 32bit Office which use Win32API calls and other 32bit DLLs etc.

Not a major issue - I've been future safing new applications for a few years now, but there 
are as some legacy Access systems that use API calls and  define pointers as LONG and 
they break when run under 64bit Access.

And then there's the problem of   ACCDE files, you need the same ACCDB compiled 
separately for 32bit or 64biot Office so distribution/updating  of secured systems will get a bit 
more tricky..




On 24 Dec 2018 at 16:37, Jim Lawrence wrote:

> It has been a steady march forward(?) in all computer systems and for
> all applications as 32bit systems are no longer being supported. You
> would think that application should be smart enough to recognize the
> environment to which it is being installed and make the appropriate
> adjustments. How difficult is it to check for 64bit hardware and
> either install or warn?
> 
> Aside: According to one survey, from
> https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/, it reports 97.9% of users
> are running a 64-bit build of Windows - giving only 2.1% on 32-bit
> Windows. There is little concern given with continuing to support the
> millions of 32 bit machines as there is no profit in these legacy
> boxes. (There is still supported Linux kernels along with associated
> software that run on 486 motherboards but software upgrades are not
> always regular.)
>