Two Questions

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Wednesday, February 12, 2014 20:23:53 Kagamin wrote:
> On Sunday, 9 February 2014 at 21:12:57 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
> 
> wrote:
> > And you get more memory out of
> > the deal even if you have as little as 4GB in the box. I wish
> > that everything
> > would move to 64-bit so that we wouldn't have to even worry
> > about 32-bit
> > anymore.
> 
> What's the advantage of having 64-bit OS on 4gb RAM?

Being able to actually use all of it. IIRC, the most that you can actually use 
with a 32-bit OS is more like 3.6GB.

> The fact is cheap configurations became available for a wider
> userbase with smaller income, who wouldn't think to buy a
> notebook not so long ago. And you sure can't persuade them to
> spend more money, 32-bit OS works and once installed it will run
> long (you don't upgrade notebooks), as long as it works, there's
> no reason to fix it.

Except that there's no reason to put a 32-bit OS on the machine in the first 
place. Sure, most folks will use whatever OS was on the box, and for some 
reason, Microsoft continues to sell 32-bit versions of its OS, but AFAIK, 
there's no real advantage to running a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit processor - only 
disadvantages. Maybe there's a good reason for it that I'm not aware of, but 
as far as I can see, there's no reason for Microsoft to even be selling a 32-
bit version of their OS anymore, since 32-bit programs will run on the 64-bit 
version, and 32-bit x86 chips aren't produced anymore. They've all been 64-bit 
for years now. So, even if someone has a lower end machine that has less than 
4GB, I see no reason to run a 32-bit OS on it. And I would have thought that 
4GB would be pretty low end at this point anyway.

- Jonathan M Davis