Office 2003 64-bit?

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Vermyndax

Does anyone know if Microsoft has officially stated whether or not there
will be a 64-bit build of Office at all?

--JM
 
Does anyone know if Microsoft has officially stated whether or not there
will be a 64-bit build of Office at all?

--JM

There isn't any reason to build a 64 bit version of Office, the 32 bit
version should work fine on 64Bit Windows. The slight difference in
performance won't be noticeable, after all the performance of Word or
Excel is comfortable on a 500MHz PIII, even the slowest of the 64 bit CPUs
is much faster than that. Also it's hard to imagine a Word document or
an Excel spreadsheet that exceeds 4G.
 
General Schvantzkoph said:
There isn't any reason to build a 64 bit version of Office, the 32 bit
version should work fine on 64Bit Windows. The slight difference in
performance won't be noticeable, after all the performance of Word or
Excel is comfortable on a 500MHz PIII, even the slowest of the 64 bit CPUs
is much faster than that. Also it's hard to imagine a Word document or
an Excel spreadsheet that exceeds 4G.

All true, but it won't stop them doing one if they can convince people they
need it.
 
There isn't any reason to build a 64 bit version of Office, the 32 bit
version should work fine on 64Bit Windows. The slight difference in
performance won't be noticeable, after all the performance of Word or
Excel is comfortable on a 500MHz PIII, even the slowest of the 64 bit CPUs
is much faster than that. Also it's hard to imagine a Word document or
an Excel spreadsheet that exceeds 4G.

The fact that MS has committed to a mainstream 64bit OS based on AMD64
means that they WILL come out with 64bit versions of all their top
productivity programs. Even if there's no practical advantage (which
seems to be your argument), that doesn't mean there's no reason for MS
to build it. As with the transition from 16bit windows to mainstream
win32 with windows95, it's another opportunity to push a new version
and get some profit from a new version.

Back then, the big argument from MS and their competitors was that it
was inherently unstable to mix and match 16 and 32bit apps, and you
should upgrade as soon as possible. There was some truth to that, but
it was hyped up quite a bit beyond that by software companies at the
time. Where you'd normally see people sticking with their existing
office software rather than upgrading, people were actually spending
the money to upgrade to the 32bit versions in a big way.

By your arguments, there's not necessarily going to be any real reason
to UPGRADE to that new version, but the opportunity to cash in on the
upgrade frenzy that comes with a new OS release is likely enough
reason for MS to build a 64 bit version.
 
The fact that MS has committed to a mainstream 64bit OS based on AMD64
means that they WILL come out with 64bit versions of all their top
productivity programs. Even if there's no practical advantage (which
seems to be your argument), that doesn't mean there's no reason for MS
to build it.

Bologny. If they build a 64-bit version of Office, they'll have to
qualify three products instead of one. They'd have to be crazy
to do that. (32-bit on 32-bit, 32-bit on 64-bit and 64-bit on 64-bit).
As with the transition from 16bit windows to mainstream
win32 with windows95, it's another opportunity to push a new version
and get some profit from a new version.

The CPU support for mixing 32-bit to 64-bit is far different
(and significantly more robust) than the rudimentary 16-bit/32-bit
mixing.
Back then, the big argument from MS and their competitors was that it
was inherently unstable to mix and match 16 and 32bit apps, and you

If you've every studied the ia32 architecture, you'd realize why
they were right. It was inherently unstable. Windows didn't
help matters either, but switching between 16 and 32-bit modes was
very painful. With the 64-bit extensions, there is no switching,
32-bit code just runs.

By your arguments, there's not necessarily going to be any real reason
to UPGRADE to that new version, but the opportunity to cash in on the
upgrade frenzy that comes with a new OS release is likely enough
reason for MS to build a 64 bit version.

Disagree, for the above reasons.

scott
 
Vermyndax said:
Does anyone know if Microsoft has officially stated whether or not there
will be a 64-bit build of Office at all?

--JM

Well first of all does anyone know if Office Xp works on AMD 64 Windows Xp?
I bet there will be a 64 version, longhorn is being preped for 64 bit, and
no matter what we do more speed is appreciated. MS Access next version
which will probably be sql based might benefit.

The trip to 64 bit will be similar to the trip to 32 bit. I remember, it
was fun for people like most of us here in the NG.

RRT
 
JS said:
Well first of all does anyone know if Office Xp works on AMD 64 Windows
Xp? I bet there will be a 64 version, longhorn is being preped for 64 bit,
and no matter what we do more speed is appreciated. MS Access next
version which will probably be sql based might benefit.

The trip to 64 bit will be similar to the trip to 32 bit. I remember, it
was fun for people like most of us here in the NG.
I agree that I think M$ will make a 64-bit version of Office. They will put
anything on the market they know people may buy. If they see green, they
don't mind spending money to get it out.

I don't think the trip to 64-bit will bne anything like the trip to 32-bit
though. 16-bit and 32-bit didn't play nice. If we were stuck with IA64 as
the only upgrade path, we would see similarities. Thankfully, AMD64 came to
save us. The processors run flawlessly in 32-bit, and MS seems to have done
a decent job with the WoW in XP64 to make most 32-bit programs run within
the 64-bit OS.
 
There isn't any reason to build a 64 bit version of Office, the 32 bit
version should work fine on 64Bit Windows. The slight difference in
performance won't be noticeable, after all the performance of Word or
Excel is comfortable on a 500MHz PIII, even the slowest of the 64 bit CPUs
is much faster than that. Also it's hard to imagine a Word document or
an Excel spreadsheet that exceeds 4G.

Don't use databases much, do you ;)
 
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