http://forums.impulsedriven.com/379026 ... the two first reply ...

Taltamir brings up an excellent point.  Corporations are not home users.  And what Windows 7 brings to the corporate table is minimal compared to the pain of upgrading thousands of computers.  Microsoft is a victim of its own success with that OS.  They got it right, and have not been able to duplicate it with succeeding versions.  Not that Vista (I think it sucks, but that is just MHO) or Windows 7 are not good - they just do not have anything extra to entice corporations to upgrade.

Indeed, very true.

Although, when the original post was made for this thread, draginol, a windows game developer, said he wishes to not have to worry about 2GB (per app) limit of 32bit windows and move on to 64bit windows games. Corporate customers with custom software and vetted computers (only large corporations can afford to vet their computers) are not the target audience of the products he makes. We went off on a tangent arguing about the need/usefulness of upgrading in the corporate market.

The way I see it, I expect many corporations to just stick with XP for a little while yet... Home users on the other hand will continue buying new computers (with latest versions bundled), buying an OS upgrade (either cheap as a student, or expensive as a home user), or even pirating one... While a few will simply stick with whatever older OS they have. Those home users that DO transition from winXP to win7 have no reason at all to get 32bit win7. Anti virus programs for home users are all subscription based and all will let you install either 32bit or 64bit with the same subscription, and any other 32bit program you want works like a charm on 64bit windows. (sandboxie is slightly more limited in its capability due to 64bit windows including kernel patch protection and 32bit windows arbitrarily don't, but that has nothing to do with them being 64bit, just a weird choice by MS to cut features from 32bit)

Actually that's not true. AVG, Avast!, and a few others are free and work great.

this is kind of missing my point. I meant that any home use anti virus you pay for is subscription model such that you can get the 64bit version at no additional cost. The free ones you also get at no additional cost.

Although I disagree with the "working great" part. they are horribly sub par.

taltalmir, I have found that BOTH the commercial AND majority of free antivirus programs fail to completely protect the computer that they are installed on from virii, trojans AND rootkits that they have the detection strings for, but as this IS one of my main areas of income ie visiting the customers and REMOVING said virii,trojans rootkits AND spyware to restore the proper functioning of computers that have entered the customer's computer from the normal operation by the customer. personally I would prefer to NOT have this income area, but the customers NEED the service, so I supply it.

harpo

... I am not sure what your point is harpo99999.

I do find many commercial anti virus apps to be a blight, but not all. ALL the free anti virus solutions are crap, SOME of the commercial ones are crap.

ESET anti virus is fairly good. Not perfect, but fairly good.

taltamir, my point is that in my experience most if not all COMMERCIAL and FREE anti-virus programs FAIL to do what they CLAIM to do mostly because they are ONLY interested in the old methods of attack (ie file infector/email attack) and have not covered the current attack types (ie web browser/im attack types) and often FAIL to detect  infections that have bypassed the limited preventers that they offer.

harpo

Personally I stick with MSE, it isn't the absolute best with detection but I hate false positives with passion (that's all I get a lot of the time with other solutions.) - http://av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_od_aug2010.pdf 

The next ver of MSE has proper network protection and all that jazz.

With the handle limits and all on 32 bit I imagine they had other reasons.

I know my local hospital network (Mayo Clinic) is already migrating to 7.  Security is important at these places, even if there's a migration headache.  They get hit by the stupid user bug too, so very important.

Then why do the free AV programs rate better in most security tests? There was a link posted on here a few years ago that ranked all the AV programs. The free ones came out near the top. The do that test every year.

Easy solution. stay away from using Internet Explorer and don't use any IM programs.

exactly. you need to be very careful about where you get your info.

Well I am happy with AVG. It's keep my machine clean for a years now. Jafo can tell you about the bad side of Norton.

I guess it really depends on your computing and browsing habits.

Taltamir, very true.  But as you noted, most corporations are not running (or developing) games, so for now the memory limitation is not an issue if all a person is going to do is spreadsheets, mail and documents.

And for the developers, most companies already make exceptions on their computer purchases - just not for the rest of the staff.

I would agree with you that all are crap - with the possible exception of ESET. I have tried it and I do like it (not on my machine, but a client's) but the pay for and free are at the same level.  Barely able to keep the known bugs at bay and worthless for a new one.  That is not necessarily their fault, just a sad reality of computer life.

I think this thread wins the gold medal for barely relevant tangents

(Since we're on a consumer forum on a game related thread about upgrading to the latest ver of Windows and we end up talking about Itanium linux businesses antiviruses and other barely related crap...I'm just gonna stop responding.)

It might be true that Win7 brings minimal benefits to corporations upgrading from XP, but that fact is also largely irrelevant. Microsoft is dropping support for Windows XP, which means corporations are forced to upgrade whether they want to or not. 

Actually, XP is the longest supported (if it goes as scheduled) OS from Microsoft.  I do not think that is a coincidence.  I am sure MS would loved to have ditched it earlier, but when such a large part of your buying base balks, you listen.  So it is relevant.

It doesn't matter how long they have supported it for if they're actively dropping support now. Only SP3 is getting updates now, and eventually that will stop. In the corporate world, companies will stop being able to downgrade to WinXP in a few years (2014 or 2015), meaning that every new computer they buy will have to have a new OS, and since mixing and matching OS across the company generally doesn't work, they have to upgrade everything. This was actually supposed to go into effect sooner, but MS was persuaded by the business clients to extend this downgrade privilege.

Which brings me back to the earlier point: companies are being forced to move on from XP, whether they want to or not.

So? SP3 is winXP, just with a bunch of patches rolled up. it is unnecessary work to backport patches for RTM, SP1, and SP2, and it is not necessary because any legal client can easily and safely upgrade to SP3 without any compatibility issues.

Eventually, yes, but its only 2010 today.

Its not as easy, but they can choose to stay with winXP.

They aren't FORCED to, its just the EASIER choice to make.

XP rocks until I can get a pirated copy of seven. I'm not giving those white collar crooks Microshaft a cent.

I'd love to. Unfortunately, money is tight and I can't afford a new system. I'll have to make do with my lowly single core 3Ghz

P4 with a whopping 1GB of Rambus memory. But I'll get right on that upgrade as soon as your check arrives.

Daftvador...be careful. Advocating piracy is a one-way ticket out of here.

Since you're new, Jafo may not smite you this time.

Surprise!  The PC market doesn't target people with no money.  The console market does.

Tell AMD to hurry up with Bulldozer.

Meanwhile, go ahead and write the 64-bit version of EWoM.  I'll be able to run it someday.  Then tell us how much performance benefit there is for it from more cores vs faster cores vs more memory vs getter video cards, etc, etc.  Give us the unofficial Elemental fan PC buying guide.