Tony,
"Why do you think Win64 won't be production ready until McKinley? That's late 2001, long time from now."
Why so late?
Couple data points:
theregister.co.uk
Timescale-wise, the "technology preview" of 64-bit is maybe a little ominous too.
Technology preview is Microsoftspeak for alpha, or even pre-alpha, and
although it means developers and hardware manufacturers will be able to get
their hands on Win64 code in some kind of shape from now on, it seems
reasonable to doubt Microsoft's ability to ship finished code in sync with the
Itanium rollout.
Microsoft's new schedule for Whistler calls for shipping in second half 2001, and
Whistler is due to go into beta any time now. So go figure on Win64's chances.
In the past slippage on new operating systems hasn't made a great deal of
difference to Microsoft, because there's been no competition and the hardware
manufacturers have just had to wait, but it's different with Itanium, because
there's Linux and a clutch of Unices poising themselves to jump in.
Point 2:
Win64 is "preview".. much like Whistler:
zdnet.com
Due in the second half of 2001. Several months late. Perhaps I am over the top a bit here but we now have
"preview" Win64 in July. Does that mean Win64 beta when
Itanium boxes ship in September? Maybe the beta slips
to December? Notice the articles regarding Win64 are
very much slippery. Microsoft won't get pinned down
into calling Win64 a "preview" but yet by their own
admission describe Win64 as "95% code complete". Okay, that's nice. But when code complete (uh-oh, do they
leave features out to get it out the door?) still a good
deal of testing before a production product.
Maybe they do things a lot faster with Win64, preview
to beta to production. I'd be surprised, wouldn't you?
Rob |
