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

Albert D. Kallal wrote:
"larwe" <zwsdotcom@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:f8b20831-c228-4e68-ac25-8cb00f8b0dfd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Jun 14, 6:59 am, "Albert D. Kallal" <PleaseNOOOsPAMmkal...@xxxxxxx>
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.

And keep in mind that as long as 32-bit operating systems satisfy the
needs of the vast majority of computer users (and as an Apple II
hobbyist, digital photographer, and occasional video processor, I am
certainly not a PC "power user"), then 64-bit OSs and applications
will continue to be a market niche.

64-bit servers make great sense. 64-bit machines for the vast majority
of users do not.

Why should I go to an even more bloated OS so that I *require* more
than 4GB *to do what I already do very well* with a 32-bit machine?

I don't keep a dozen apps open on my desktop--and neither do most
other people.

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?

Apple II hobbyists--*not* PC "mine's bigger than yours" gamers!

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

There are so many misconceptions above, I hardly know where to start
unravelling...

First, almost all the content on the Internet is the product of small,
32-bit apps that have no use for very large datasets. This includes
video.

Business users are noted for having machines that are about two
generations older than the current machines on the market--the
exceptions are engineers who use the computer for running large
digital simulations or other "power" uses, and they constitute a
tiny minority of PC users in a company.

Further, the output of their computation is seldom for any public
consumption, but is very tightly controlled within a project group.

The whole point of "cloud computing" is that any user, regardless of
the capabilities of his own machine, can harness arbitrarily large
amounts of computing capability from the "cloud" to produce anything
requiring a mass of data or cycles. Cloud computing is exactly about
not having to provision every desktop for its "worst case" computing
or data storage load.

(I prefer my personal computing local, but that's a matter of taste,
and a luxury that many business computer users already forego.)

(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.

Wow--you really are out of touch!

When you see pretty graphics on the Internet, the probability that they
were created on a Mac is quite disproportionate to the Mac market share.
Graphic Arts departments are heavy Mac users.

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.

They had to go to 64 bits to remain competitive in the database server
market. The mainstream desktop market is a completely different animal.

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.

99% of all desktop users have no need or use for virtualization.
Virtualization is a popular technology for server farms to allow the
number of (large) applications running to be decoupled from the number
of physical machines and their specific configurations.

The purpose of virtualization is to save money (and power).

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.

As long as a 32-bit version of Windows ships (and that will be a long
time), it will be far and away the most efficient and most compatible
way of running 32-bit applications, which will continue to be the most
popular applications.

There was a compelling reason for desktop users to migrate from 16-bit
systems and applications to 32-bit ones--64KB is a pretty small limit.
But 4GB is *not* a small limit--yet. Maybe in another 5-10 years...

Of course, Microsoft would prefer to herd us all along on a single
platform--like their server platform--but wishing doesn't make it so.

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

It's time for you to produce some evidence for that statement.

While bulk data moves benefit from wider data paths, that's not the
issue for today's 64-bit architectures--they already have 64- and
128-bit datapaths in 32-bit addressing mode. This is widely used
for multimedia data types, which are the Binary Large OBjects of
today. Floating-point calculation also already benefits from wider
datapaths, regardless of address size.

When moving to 64-bit addressing, code size increases and pointer
size increases, resulting in more code and data cache misses.
This is a good tradeoff if it replaces bank switching overhead to
randomly access a single large data object. Otherwise, it is just
overhead with no corresponding benefit. (And if you say yet again
that Microsoft will *force* everyone to move to 64-bit addressing,
I suggest you polish your crystal ball. ;-)

Compelling advantages must accrue to the user or they simply won't
move until forced to, and forcing them costs lots of goodwill.

There has been no shortage of PC capacity for at least the last
five years, and until/unless someone comes up with a new "killer app"
that everyone *really wants* and is computationally demanding, the
PC upgrade pace will remain quite sluggish.

Today, PC upgrades are dominated by cost reductions, not power
upgrades. Netbooks are just the latest example of that. Smartphones
are another. A lot of people are spending a lot less time with their
traditional PCs. Intel is covering their bets with the Atom, but
Microsoft is worried.

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

They can release all they want--Office 97 actually does everything that
99.9% of users need, and most of them are not at all motivated to move
to a later version unless it is given to them and works just like the
older version they know and love.

BTW, you can't be serious about a *spread**** for which 64-bit
addressing is needed!! ;-)

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.

And third parties may serve the users if Microsoft fails to do so.

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

Because it's a cheaper and safer way of dealing with inevitable
incompatibilities in any new OS--something that Microsoft failed
to handle well in Vista, as in the transition to NT.

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.

I agree that Apple has not been as constrained by binary compatibility.
Their uses are sufficiently committed that they are willing to put up
with incompatibilities. That is not the case for Windows users--again,
see Vista for a case in point.

Microsoft has a history of OS releases that never really catch on,
because their perceived advantages are less than their perceived costs.
And PC users have very little "romance" about their platform--they just
want it to keep working the way it did yesterday and be affordable.
Several years ago, they wanted it to be faster, but now they are either
satisfied with or resigned to current performance levels (which have
essentially stopped improving on popular applications).

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.

Nonsense. I don't want to run exponentially more simultaneous
applications. The number of contexts I keep open is more limited
by my bandwidth than by my computer's bandwidth. ;-)

I can only keep track of 5 +/- 2 things... ;-)

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.

Compatibility is a completely different substance. Compatibility is
only an issue when it has been broken by a transition that you didn't
want in the first place!

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.

And all the DVDs I see have 1GB VOBs anyway. ;-)

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.

Now you're on the right track--some "killer app" that will require lots
of address space.

But finding faces seems to work just fine in "virus scanner" mode,
indexing away through the night. It works on files that are at most
a few MB in size, so that certainly doesn't justify 64-bit addressing.

I've proposed a "supercomputer" level potential killer app in the past,
but no one has brought such an app to market. (In fact, the rarified IP
involved in my example will probably keep it out of the consumer market
for years.)

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.

Give me a break. The entire PC market has utterly failed to find any
broadly compelling new use for PCs for the last decade. What do *you*
have in mind? A way to use 8GB of memory to do the same things we do
today with 2GB?

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.

He's just pointing out that your example is not a good one.

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.

And that can be done by scanning the video *sequentially*, perhaps by
"skipping through" to "index" the scenes and faces. There is no
advantage to having all of it in memory at once, and no advantage to
directly addressing it.

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.

Again, you haven't suggested a single thing that makes sense for a
majority user that requires 64-bit addressing. You need to come to
grips with the fact the 4GB is a *very large* size for an object.

I'm sure that we will find a truly large-memory important app, but
I don't see it yet--and not because lots of people aren't looking.

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!

So professionals will be using server farms to manage digital movies.
But non-professionals (and lots of professionals) will be using cameras
that intrinsically compress, so their editing will be done in, say,
motion JPEG format prior to compressing to a distribution format.

This problem is already well solved using "segments" of edited/processed
video linked together during playback for previewing. It does not place
any new requirements on system addressing.

One can imagine an editing system that directly addresses *all* the
shots simultaneously, and such systems can be built today. If they are
cost-effective, they will become important in the market, but they have
not done so yet.

And it's not clear what they could do that cannot be done as well with
current systems... Whoever can make a compelling case for such apps
will deservedly make a lot of money and create a need for 64-bit PCs.
But they haven't done it yet.

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 hell with VMs. They are a solution to a very special problem which
most users do not have. To use VMs for running copies of Word is just
silly. It's the kind of thing you would do if you were trying to figure
out how to make a workload take more cycles and more RAM. ;-)

. 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.

And that is a marketing decision. PAE support is quite general and
could easily be part of the standard consumer systems--if there were
good reasons for a lot of people to run >4GB systems with lots of
applications simultaneously active--which there aren't.

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.

PAE is a compatibility hack--it allows multiple 32-bit apps to take
advantage of the existence of >4GB machines. In fact, there are
relatively few such machines at present, and little motivation to
build them (cost-effectiveness, workloads, etc.).

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.

Totally wrong. Content is created by regular folks sitting at desktops
that are, on average, four years old!

"Computer jocks" who fancy that they live or die by the latest thing
have expensive >4GB machines running 2+ video cards in SLI, and 4+
cores. The total content created by this faction is barely visible
in the ocean of content--unless you are Pixar.

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.

The industry would like nothing better than to be perceived as creating
real value at a pace that leaves users in danger of being "left behind".

The truth is that the PC industry is essentially stagnant, and has been
so for almost the last decade. They gave up on more sequential MIPS,
which actually reduces the delay between click and screen update, and
replaced it with more cores, which deliver very little speedup to most
users doing most tasks (assuming a reasonable OS scheduler).

The applications available for PCs (and Macs, no reason to leave anyone
out ;-) have not changed much in several years, so rational users do not
see a compelling value proposition for more, more, more.

What they *would* value is a system that delivered a more carefree,
easier to use computing experience. We used to think that meant more
processing, but the Mac has demonstrated that it can be delivered on
exactly the same hardware with only cleverer software and tighter
configuration control.

I don't use a Mac, but the success of their current marketing
strategy shows that the market values reliability and ease of use
over raw (and mostly wasted) *potential* performance.

I'll be the first to move to 64-bits when it enables me to do
something *that I want to do*, preferably without preventing me
from doing a bunch of other things that I want to do. ;-)

-michael

******** Note new website URL ********

NadaNet and AppleCrate II for Apple II parallel computing!
Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
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