Re: ADT Pro With Windows 7 (64-Bit)

["Albert D. Kallal" <PleaseNOOOsPAMmkallal@msn.com>]

"larwe" <zwsdotcom@gmail.com> wrote in message
f8b20831-c228-4e68-ac25-8cb00f8b0dfd@p21g2000prn.googlegroups.com">news:f8b20831-c228-4e68-ac25-8cb00f8b0dfd@p21g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
On Jun 14, 6:59 am, "Albert D. Kallal" <PleaseNOOOsPAMmkal...@msn.com>
wrote:


>> Fine and in 1991 precious few people were using 32 bit computers.

>So? There were compelling reasons to upgrade. A 386DX is much faster
and more capable than a 286, and it's not from the 32-bit datapath
either.

That is Exactly my point right now. Since Virtualization is going to be used
in the next generation of windows being shipped, then the need for RAM will
increase quite a bit. It's not really that hard  of a concept to grasp.

I simply making the case that without Virtualization and without Windows XP
being shipped with copies of windows 7 then I think there would be a lot
more "leeway" in the marketplace for not adopting a 64 bit OS.

Keep in mind that while the industry has shoehorned PAE (physical address
extensions) into most server editions of windows, on the consumer editions
of windows, or even the professional editions for the desktop THEY DO NOT
SUPPORT PAE. The 4GB RAM is starting to come into play here. Virtualization
is the camel that starting to break the camel's back in this regards.

>Read the industry rags - computer manufacturers everywhere are
complaining that netbooks are "all the computer anyone needs" and
that's why they can't sell more expensive machines.

Right and I thought we're talking about computer hobbyists here?


> And if the cloud
computing hype (or "NC, round 2, 2009 edition") takes off, there will
be even less reason to have big iron on the desktop.

Who's desktop? People who are consumers, or people who use computers for a
living?

You're making the classic failure of not understanding the difference
between desktops and the Internet and the cloud. There's no question some
little net book, or even you're smart phone is going to "consume" that
corpoate sales report at the end of the year.

However, all those cool pie charts and all that corpoarte information will
still be created by that user with a rich powerfull desktop. That corporate
report will likey have all kinds of information and graphics and charts
and maybe even video that was pulled from MANY corporate business 
information
systems and edited and rendered on that desktop. After all
this is said and done, and the cool 3d bar charts are rendered and created
by that desktop user, THEN THE content will be posted in a format that can 
be
consumed by that smart phone or net-book.

The model you have to think of is very much like a radio station and the
broadcasters. The people who buy the little cheap transistor radios and
ipods etc. are content consumers. However to make the radio station run you
needed a huge amount of equipment and a lot of power. So, you still need
that rich content creating system. Whether your video editing, recording and
encoding your mp3 songs, or whatever kind of content you are creating you
are going to need lots of horsepoer/processing to accomplish these goals.

It's not that the desktop has reduced importance now, the problem is is that
we now the average consumer is not using a computer to make their payroll
(but the average consumer was never doing this).

The computer as a device has become a
mainstream product. However, this has NOT reduced the number of desktops and
creators or users of powerful computers. In fact it's increased the number
of users needing good desktops. It means that the rich desktop is much like
the radio station, and the weaker computers like smartphones and net-books
are like the radio stations that receive this content that is created.

So as a percentage of the computers sold today I 100% agree desktop is less
important. On the other hand those content creators are very important. They
are likey more important today, than they were fifteen years ago, and there
is MORE of them today. So, we have a need for the rich desktop more then
we ever had.

Is that little ever wonder that most people who buy Macintosh computers are
not using them for business? A typical consumer can buy a Mac or windows box
today, because they are "mostly" consuming the content, they're not involved
in the creation of the content side. This 100% changes for those that
produce the content or work in this industry

(and to save some posts back here:
yes I realize the macintosh's heavy involved in the publishing side of 
things,
but when I say content, i also mean your payroll stub). Most mac users
are consumers of content..not creators.

>> Intel and AMD wasted their time on 64 bit computing. however, you have
>> made
>> the point that you don't see much use for 64bit computers for the people
>> here or in general.

>I said there is no reason to upgrade unless you have a program that
will actually benefit.

It's not only the programs, it's also the operating system, and having more
address space. as I said, Virtualization is going to push this.

>Nobody - not even myself in my Team OS/2 days - buys a computer to run
an operating system.

No you don't, but on the other hand if you can't run something from before,
that's what you do care about. We're getting Windows XP compatibility mode
as a virtual system for the above very reason. Consumers don't care about
the os or memory, but the **DO CARE** if they can run their previous
software. Virtualization will thus increase the demands on memory, not
necessarily because we want more memory, because it's an easy way out for
compatibility issue in our industry.

>*We* are not using them, developers are using them. Maybe. Do you
write Windows programs? Do you write Windows programs built for 64
bits? Do they perform measurably differently from the same program
compiled for 32 bits?

Yes, I will make the transistion to 64bits for the software that I write.
And, yes...all kinds of software will experience significant increases in
performance when you do so.


>> Furthermore, it was just announced about a month ago that Microsoft is
>> releasing a 64 bit version of office (so called office 14, or aptly named

>Which is part of their effort to migrate people away from older
Windows versions; eventually they will doubtless stop supporting 32-
bit apps at all. While I agree it will happen, it's very much a case
of the tail wagging the dog.

Well, then why include windows xp as a virtualized operating system then???

>> It's also important to note that windows7 is going to ship with a virtual
>> PC
>> addition of Windows XP for compatibility issues. That pretty much means
>> the

>Translation: because so little runs on Vista/Win7. This is WOW
(Windows On Windows, the Win16 subsystem in Win32 OSes) all over
again.

And exactly what is your solution to the above problem? You are certainly
not suggesting we go the apple way of blowing out all the software every 10
years or so?

I mean you can still run the 1981 version of Visicalc on a brand new vista
box today. The compatibility and track record of protecting your software
investment on the windows platform has been a country mile better than any
other desktop company in this industry right now. It not even close when you
compare this to apple.

Apple has blowen out ALL OF your software more then once. You can't run your
mid 1980's programs on a 1990's apple. Then again for osx, you could not run
your previous old stuff.

I still have customers running code of mine from the late eighties.

>> going to chew out likely about 1 gig of ram for that virtual session (and
>> if
>> you have more RAM, I'm sure some of us would give that windows xp session
>> 1.5 to 2GB of ram).

>Wait a moment... so you're telling me that we need 64-bit Windows to
support applications that wouldn't be necessary if the machine was
running a 32-bit OS to begin with?

Yes that's exactly what I'm saying. There really not an easy way to move to
64bits otherwise. (unless you have a better suggestion) The issues now is 
RAM
enables us to run a virtual edition of Windows XP in win7. Therefore need
for compatibility is thus driving the need for more ram. We have two issues
here, one the move to 64 bits, and that of a new os. They are two separate
issues, but they certainly are interconnected. We should not fog this issue
up here (64bits and a new os). Even without virtual XP on win7, Win 7
is FAR better at running previuos software then your mac osx that can't run
the older osftware.

Allowing the industry to jump to 64 bits, and using Virtualization to keep
compatibility is a reasonable compromise, it certainly  better then what
apple has done MORE THEN once.

>> gigs. A typical DVD file is larger then 4 gigs. You CANNOT memory map a
>> simple DVD file into memory when you use a 32 bit OS (how silly is
>> that!!).>

>Hey, guess what (yes, I'm parroting) - This is an example of a
software application that requires (though I can't see why) random
access to a large dataset.

Well again that's just your lack of vision as to what can be done here.
Having a video fully addresable in RAM opens up all kinds of new
possibilities.  How about something that goes through your family video(s)
on that DVD and recognizes all the faces that you tagged on facebook? Now
you have a video that searchable by people's names, where it wasn't before.

Gosh I can think of hundreds of applications and ideas that would benefit
from having additional ways of storing videos or other content in RAM for
indexing and comparsion purposes.

>But, by the way, how many people ever need to access a DVD randomly?

You have absolutely no vision of the future and no ideas as to what you can
do with additional processing and memory. Perhaps you don't see anything new
that can be done with technology and you simply living in the past and don't
see what can be done here.

>They access it sequentially. MPEG-2 can't really be decoded backwards,
because the order of P and B frames relative to their parent I frame
is important. Why on earth would you want to map the whole file to
play or transcode it?

Who says we going to decode it backwards? let's not make silly straw man
arguments here.

We already have applications that recognizes a song paying on the radio from
your iPhone when you put the iphone close to the speaker. There's all kinds
of a video scenarios in which "places", "roads", "buldings" and even
people's faces could be recognized and lifted from those videos. Some of
these things could be processed sequentially, but often some REALLY
significant and amazing benefits to procssing this stuff in memory can be
had.

Once again, I think once these types of content have been processed, then
sure you'll be able to consume the results on your little smart phone.

>> If you want to do nonlinear editing on MPEG-2
you really need to cache the uncompressed codec output.

The above is a great point. It simply makes my case stronger. Edting video
or sound in "less" of or even in a RAW format without any compression is a
GREAT case for why we need more amounts of *addressable* RAM today. This is
especially the case if you're resulting format is going to be a lossly
compression (which most of the contents are today!). So you make a great
case for more RAM in this regards....well done!

>> That means if you have two copies of word running, there is only ONE copy
>> of
> the code in memory, and then the memory for that application is separated.

>Yes, and it is readonly, and mapped to the same virtual addresses in
two VMs

Well, I think it is stretching it to call this a VM. I suppose we can say
that the process is a VM, and it certainly does get it own set of registers
etc. I would call this more of a process then a VM. not all code is
re-entrant, but we can assume it is written that way.

>>. The _writable_ heap area is separate in the two VMs. So each
executing instance of that single copy of Word has a full 4GB address
space (less OS reserved address space overhead, which IIRC in Windows
is 2GB).

No, actualy it does not. The consumer editions of windows don't support
PAE....only the server editions do. So, NO you can't actualy get that much
ram for both copies running. That application has to run in the OS kernels
RAM space in the first place. (else you can't have the code being 
re-entrant.


You would have to have two copies of word running, not that one sepearte 
copy running.
Regarless, in windows 32 (desktop editions, we don't have address extensons
anyway). You only get some additional UAE protection when you enable PAE for
the consumer editions of windows. Regarless, it sill somewhat of a hack. For
more mememory, 64 bits is the answer.

>> code or program written in 32 bits. when the next version of office comes
>> out, those power users when they're ordering their dell, you'll be able
>> to

>LOL. See above, and comments about netbooks. Sure, "power users" will
order the most expensive thing, because it's their function to support
the economy that way. But this has nothing to do with whether they
will be any more productive with those expensive toys.

You are failing to distinguish about people who are creating content with a
desktop computer, as opposed to those that are consuming that content. I
think this explains why you don't very much see the need for these computers
that create the content. You have to make a distinction here between these
two types the users, and I think it's critical. The number of desktops users
today for creating information content is greater today than it was fifteen
years ago. Howver, as a percentage of comptuer users, there's now more
consumers than creators of content.

>Ride the bleeding edge all you like, but proselytizing it is a bit
pointless - people who enjoy pain are already clutching the blade on
either side of you, and the rest of us who need to get some work done
simply don't care.

But you are doing exactly the same thing!

Your lack vision and what benefits that 64 bits means for our industry is
fine, but then that just means the industry is leaving you behind and your
proselytizing as to this not being needed nor their being tangible benifts
is simply not the choice that the computer industry is making.

-- 
Albert D. Kallal
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
pleaseNOOSpamKallal@msn.com