Will Windows 7 Be The First x64 Only Windows Client?

This is the question on everyone’s lips at the moment. There has been some differing reports on it floating around the internet, it’s hard to tell who is right until an official statement is made. And I bet it’s a hot topic in many of the meetings that will be attending right now. This previous post talks about why should we bother moving to x64 right now? And it’s true; there is no main driver in migrating to x64 for the everyday Windows user just now. In fact it’s just a headache with some applications not being supported. And while Microsoft continue to support x86, it will continue to be the same. In fact, the only reason people would feel compelled to jump to x64 just now would be a specific application requiring more than 4GB of memory space……how many applications are going to boast to being that hungry for memory?
So Microsoft will be mulling this over again….back to the drawing board. Do we make Windows 7 x86 compatible or draw the line in the sand?
I think you can bet your bottom dollar that Microsoft has this exact conversation with the banking establishments and in the end x86 Windows 7 hit’s the shelf in the coming years.
The great x64/x86 debate is quite comparable to the TCP/IP v4/v6 one. TCP/IP v6 might offer great scalability, greater this and great that. But at the end of the day it’s going to both cost a lot of people a lot of time and money to adopt it for what would seem negligible benefits on the most part. On the other side of the coin you can see why Exchange 2007 benefits from x64 architecture, it’s a resource hungry application, but until we see those kind of stakes on the desktop, don’t expect to be using those x64 instructions on your processor anytime soon….if at all.