64-Bit Windows 7 Momentum Explodes, Dwarfs Vista and XP

[Peaches]

64-Bit Windows 7 Momentum Explodes, Dwarfs Vista and XP

It will be interesting to see what Microsoft plans for the successor of Windows 7

Almost 1 in 2 customers running the latest iteration of the Windows client are using systems with 64-bit (x64) architectures and 64-bit (x64) copies of Windows 7. According to statistics provided by the Redmond company, no less than 46% of all Windows 7 PCs worldwide are equipped with a 64-bit edition of the operating system, as of June 2010. It appears that with the advent of Windows Vista's successor, x64 adoption has surged, approximately half of all machines now sporting the 64-bit flavor of Windows 7. No less than 89% of Vista computers worldwide are running x86 versions of the operating system. However, it was Vista in the first place that kick started the explosion of x64 adoption. 64-bit processors were available to end users long before Windows Vista hit store shelves in January 2007, but they failed to gain any real traction, even though Microsoft did produce an x64 version of Windows XP. To this day, only 1% of Windows XP computers are 64-bit.

"A primary benefit of 64-bit Windows is the increase in addressable memory. This makes more "bits" available to Windows (the OS), which means more information can be "addressed" at once. 32-bit architectures have a memory ceiling of 4GB while the 64-bit architecture increases the memory ceiling to approximately 17.2 billion GB or RAM! Windows 7 is designed to use up to 192 GB of RAM, a huge jump compared to limits with all 32-bit systems," LeBlanc added.

Story - http://news.softpedi...XP-146869.shtml