Windows for Athlon 64 "highly unready"

Dear Mike

In your article 'World+dog waits for release of Windows for Athlon64 you write:

"Microsoft is perfectly capable of delaying its own products without any interference from anyone else"

Which in the case of 64-bit XP for AMD appears quite true, this product will slide, and slip, and slide again - far past any reasonable release date.

Not, mind you, necessarily due to any Machiavellian maneuverings on the part of Mr. Balmer. Even if one were to have the Business Ethics of a psychotic Water Rat, and there is some evidence that the Rats would be justified in filing suit for comparing them to Steve, it's damn near impossible to bluff and blunder with a product so technically deficient and so obviously not yet ready for release as 64-bit XP for Athlon.

Working with build 1069, it's fairly clear that not only are the hardware vendors having a great deal of difficulty in writing to the driver models, and that the 'WOW' 32-bit emulator is somewhat fussy about the code fed to it, but that the core OS components themselves are constantly teetering on the edge of implosion. Even very simplistic commands like requesting 'Properties' for a Broadcom Ethernet adapter can bring about a system-wide meltdown from which the only escape is the Big Red Switch.

It's interesting to compare the status of 64-bit XP to 64-bit LINUX, Gentoo with the 2.6-01 Kernel appears both stable and relatively full-featured, there is a very complete and feature-rich driver set, the system is quite fast, and the there is no apparent difficulty in running mixed 32 and 64-bit applications.

Mind you, this is an invidious comparison, since it glosses over the inherent difficulties in achieving a running LINUX system from the hideous mish-mash of source code which constitutes the typical LINUX distribution, while the MS product does come all bright, shining, and completely assembled in binary form.

Essentially, MS is currently delivering a rather stripped-down Humber Super Snipe - less headlights, windshield, several missing pistons in the engine, and with orange-crates for seats. While Gentoo offers the rather unique opportunity to have a fully functional Lotus Super Seven, if one is willing to assemble it while sitting nude in total darkness upon the floor of your computer.

Name and address supplied