[gan]

Originally Posted by Sir Richard

On an existing business side of things, its far too expensive and complicated to move everyone onto 64Bit system and OS then upgrade every Application. I work for a group that has over 7300 Employees UK they use Windows XP Pro 32bit and office 2003 SP3.

For large companies upgrade of OS is expensive without any doubt, but i work for a Microsoft gold partner and we have a lot of consultants which is basically what this company is all about. Our experience is that more and more customers are moving to 64 bit OS and one common reason is the 4gb RAM limit with a 32 bit OS. Our company use 64 bit only for the OS. So i would have to disagree when you make it sound like companies won't move to 64 because it's too expensive. Yes it's expensive, but that doesn't mean it's too expensive to make this upgrade. I believe it's just a matter of time before most companies switch to 64 bit and we see that the demand for 64 bit increased a lot since Vista and Windows 7. It will take time before everyone switch, but it's just a matter of time and it's not that far into the future i think.

I know that a lot of companies are still stuck with 32 bit XP, but that doesn't mean we should ignore 64 bit Windows since there is a significant marketshare already for Windows 7 x64 and it's growing. We also know that XP will die in time and 64 bit is the future. New server software from Microsoft is almost only 64 bit for the new versions they release and they started to release 64 bit software for the desktop as well. Many other software companies also started to release 64 bit software so it's easy to see the trend.

I don't know if most of ConeXware's customer are companies or not, but i'm under the impression that the advanced home PC users using Windows 7 it's very common with 64 bit Windows.

Originally Posted by Sir Richard

They have a 3 year I.S Plan to move everyone onto Windows 7 32Bit, why not 64bit?? because of known software incompatibilities and Code has to be rewritten from scratch so developers charge more.

I also have to disagree with this one. Actually the compatiblilty are very good. For almost all of the common software used in companies it will work fine with 64 bit OS. Our company even have consultants working with telecom and old pabx's and they use a lot of old software that many people probably didn't think still is being used. That work's fine as well. There is also an option to use XP mode with Windows 7 as a last resort. With enough RAM and a decent computer that works great. If you also have a SSD which is getting common these days you won't notice any delay at all using XP mode. Extremly seldom or maybe even never is there a need to rewrite code from scratch for a 32 bit app to work on 64 bit OS. Most often it will just work even if designed for 32 bit and sometimes minor changes. For software that include drivers then 64 bit drivers are needed of course, but the GUI can still be 32 bit.

I don't know your company and what software you use, but unless there are some very good reasons to choose 32 bit i would say that's a big mistake. My bet is that such a decision will force your company to make the next upgrade sooner than 3 years because the demand for more RAM and other reasons as well. Like i said i don't know your company, but would be very interested to hear the reasons why you would choose 32 bit when doing such a major upgrade. It would be very interesting to hear what apps that a large part of your company use that won't work with 64 bit. Also a upgrade from XP to Windows 7 isn't supported so a new installation have to be done anyway. That would be a good time to make the switch from 32 to 64 bit.

Originally Posted by Sir Richard

Keeping PowerArchiver as a 32bit application although its proven better at extracting than 64bit does not stop skeptics from questioning and in many ways slander the application on forum's, reviews, websites etc all just because it isnt using the more "Modern" 64bit. This in return can cause a domino decline on New Business and increase lapsed sales.

As i said before in this forum, there are benchmark tests using Winrar x86 and Winrar x64 show the opposite. In that case the x64 edition are faster. I don't know all the details and i'm not saying that x64 is the best without exceptions in all cases, but i'm just saying that the benchmark from ConeXware differ from other benchmarks. There is no right or wrong here so when ConeXware say that x64 extraction is slower, that's the fact and everyone saying different are wrong i find that a bit hard to accept. Why Winrar x64 are faster compared to the x86 edition i don't know. Maybe they managed to do something smart that isn't possible with 32 bit or maybe they just don't bother to enhance the x86 version anymore because they believe x64 is the future.....i don't know. I'm just saying that i have never seen a benchmark that says running winrar x86 on a x64 OS will perform faster compared to using winrar x64.

Originally Posted by Sir Richard

My advise to ConeXware....

Finish 2011, work on a new website and then come 2013 Anounce "PowerArchiver X64 Toolbox Edition".

I would not do a 64bit Standard Edition, Why? Because I deem 64bit used more by Profesionals that deal with file archiving every day and that would fall under the new Toolbox edition.

I agree that to finish 2011 x86 should be pri 1, but i also think they should be able to release a x64 version in 2012 at the latest. Work on a new website shouldn't have a higher priority than creating the x64 edition. Hopefully ConeXware can do this in parallel since i'm pretty sure that the people working on the website are not the same as the PA developers. It's still a cost though.

I also have to say that i'm not saying x64 is the best no matter what, but it would be nice if ConeXware where among the first with 64 bit and not the last. Also it seems like a lot of people demand 64 bit for several reasons.....and it's all about selling the products the customers want, right? Customer demand. Even if ConeXware think there is not point it's more important to ask what do the customers want.

I also have to add that PA is probably the fastest or among the fastest when talking about compression/extraction so this part is really good. When talking about the GUI i find PA to be surprisingly slow though. I can launch most other applications like word, excel, Visio, Acrobat and so on faster than PA. So this part is very disappointing. The only app that launch slower on my computer i believe is Photoshop. Even Visual Studio 2010 launch just as fast as PA.

-gan