

AT&T Mobility President and CEO Ralph De La Vega.

"I think they just need to make it better."








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RE: Title
By lol123 on 6/7/2011 7:18:13 AM , Rating: 2
Windows hasn't been x86 exclusive for a long time (since the 3.1 days). Even Windows XP was available for Itanium, and Windows NT supported Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC and Itanium aside from x86.

It's also still doubtful that Windows 8 for ARM will be a full Windows version and not just a tablet OS sharing the same kernel. Offering the same edition of Windows for different architectures works when you are targeting enterprise customers (like with NT and XP for Itanium), but it would cause extreme confusion among consumers when they can't run any standard Windows applications.

RE: Title
By ekv on 6/8/2011 4:09:38 AM , Rating: 2
NT 4.0 was released a long time ago. Before XP. So, really, is it even usable, i.e. relevant?

Itanium of course is an Intel product. Intel basically defines the x86 ISA. Windows support of Itanium going forward is being dropped, no?

Windows CE runs on a variety of ISA's, but that gets into a rather pedantic discussion. So perhaps I ought not say "x86 exclusive" but instead talk about grafting ARM into the so-called Wintel alliance. Though that isn't really satisfying since Intel's reacting like they've been-thrown-under-the-bus.
Offering the same edition of Windows for different architectures
Your last statement doesn't quite add up because NT is (essentially) deprecated and Windows Server 2003/8 is what would be used instead. Consumers of course run XP/Vista/Win7. App's not specifically stated to run on Server versions are certainly not guaranteed to run there. However, in the consumer world of tablets, smartphones, etc., Win8 would appear to be designed to offer operability across such platforms. In other words, Win8 appears designed to run standard Windows app's on different architectures. This would reduce confusion, no?


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