X64 definitely DOA and beyond......

I have to rant right now at every dev house and driver maker and plug-in manufacturer in existence, not to mention the KING OF ALL FUCK-UPS MacroShaft. I waited a LONNGGG time before I made the jump with my brand new AMD X2 4400+ with 2GB RAM - NUMA on my mind - in Oct2005.

I should have waited until hell froze over. From IE32 crashing every 10 minutes AND TAKING DOWN EXPLORER, IE64 having no plugins and toolbars all the way TO MS THEMSELVES NOT HAVE SPECIAL FEATURES ON THEIR $100 Wireles Desktop, At least Logitech did, it was 5 months of a nightmare like being back in Redmond - shudders horribly and that was enough except that my dev efforts at home became severely hampered by Virtual Server R2 not working on X64 Pro, as advertised, which meant I couldn't test Client\Server SOA. Damnit Damnit Damnit.

Others are feeling the pain also as the "push to mainstream 64 bit computing" is, how should I say it, faltering even now. I have always said - after I left of course since there was no need in talking while an employee - that MS should be paying out grants for small comapnies to get things done and maybe get a penny or two per client. After all, you can't get more than 90% of the market. MS is and should be a solid stable release every year or so with new APIs and faster kernel methods with more abstraction.

This is all over the news as Vista Home - or LongerHorn as it's been called - has been yet again delayed for the consumer space. As a Windows workhorse in the time through "The Fall" I can say that it is through a lack of adequate testing of consumer space products like XP Home, I have no doubt that a lot of the functionality needs to be worked on to overcome issues that should have been caught much earlier in the cycle. I mean I can't remember seeing a "Home Network" setup anywhere with XP Home. Even things like System Restore weren't tested with Home - well hey I tried....

And through the worst of Vista's woes, the guys in charge decide that automation is more important than and even supercedes the tied and true methods of Dev\SDET\STE in equal measures dependent on component complexity. What a mess that thing will be in the hands of millions without it. And I don't think this Too little, too late change will do that much to make up for the manhours spent on actually fully implemting Aero into Explorer.....duhhhh, sounds familar. Hopefully the reported level of lockdown will prevent the "I Love You" times of the late 90's and actually run well on the 100s of 1000s of Dell machines that will be sold with it - hey, Dell barely pays for anything, but maybe they should start demanding REAL GRAPHICS from Intel.

As I have toally digressed from my rant about X64 I can say that I am typing this with XP SP2 wondering if I can get my $150 back for MS' attempt at moving to 64 bit. The good news is that my FireFox problems have been solved also, because I switched back in time for IE 7 Beta 2 which is pretty good at not keeping 100s of MBs of RAM while I cruise through "tab threads." Of course that's because IE 7 doesn't have an X64 beta. I'm even able to run other services in the same amount of space as the redundant 32\64 services on X64 with WoW - my systray has 15 items.

Did I say - in my best immigrant voice - Son of the bitch.