Now that we have Office, will 64-bit apps finally become more common?

Without giving it a little thought, I don't recall when I got my first Athlon 64 mainboard and CPU. It's been a long time. AMD first released the chips in September, 2003. Here we are six years later, and we still haven't really begun to make use of the added processing power.

Six years is a pretty long time in computer terms. My tower at work is now equipped with eight times as much memory, 50 times more capacity on its hard drive, and four processor cores instead of one. All those improvements, and yet I'm still stuck running primarily 32-bit applications on it.

What a waste. Perhaps now there's a light and the end of the tunnel.

I was thrilled when Adobe decided to release an x64 build of CS4 for Windows. Days ago I installed the Office 2010 technical preview - also a native 64-bit version. With two of the most prominent commercial application suites making the jump, maybe we're finally going to see more widespread development of 64-bit apps.

Can you imagine our systems not taking advantage of other hardware technology that's been around for six years - like SATA or 802.11g wireless, for example? It just doesn't make any sense, does it?

Tags: 64-bit, Op-Ed, opinion, x64