Windows 7 - Needs 64 Bit?
One way to read this ComputerWorld story is that Windows 7 is a resource hog:
Citing data from Devil Mountain Software's community-based Exo.performance.network (XPnet), Craig Barth, the company's chief technology officer, said that new metrics reveal an unsettling trend. On average, 86% of Windows 7 machines in the XPnet pool are regularly consuming 90%-95% of their available RAM, resulting in slow-downs as the systems were forced to increasingly turn to disk-based virtual memory to handle tasks.
A slightly different way to view it is this: Microsoft has seen the future, and it has 64 bits, not 32. Do we "need" 64 bits? Well heck, you could have asked "do we need 32 bits?" a decade or so ago, too. Microsoft would like to have Windows 7 push new hardware sales, and I think they'd be even happier if those sales were at least 64 bit ready, if not actively running 64 bit.
