I haven't tried either game, but I'd wager that if Red Alert 1 doesn't work, would be because it's a 16 bit ececutable using a 32 bit extender and is thus not a "true" 32 bit application. But I haven't tested it.

So what you'd be seeing is not that 64 bit Vista doesn't support 32 bit applications (it does), but rather that 64 bit Vista does not support 16 bit applications.

32 bit applications work perfectly. Unless the application is designed to specifically detect a 64 bit OS and complain, I have yet to encounter any issues running 32 bit executables in 64 bit Vista.

They should work using a virtual machine, however. A virtual machine will allow you to run 16 bit applications. I can run Windows 3 in a virtual machine.

Ooh - I love that project. In fact I created a patch for it (the aircraft queueing patch) . Even though I no longer maintain that patch . I *think* it works in 64 bit Vista, but it's been so long since I've tried it.

As a student writing Java applications in 64 bit Vista for homework right now, I have no troubles at all. Everything seems to work as expected. Can you describe the troubles you are having?

Does your program run on Mac OS X? If not, it's not a very good comparison.

The issue here is that writing a Java program that works on Mac OS X and Windows is not easier than writing a .NET program that works on Mac OS X and Windows. And in both cases you have to install the runtime on one of the target systems.

I don't know much about the current state of Apple's Cocoa bindings for Java, but I think they were deprecated. OTOH Cocoa bindings for .NET are up and coming. On the Windows side .NET can use both Windows Presentation Foundation and Win32 (Windows Forms).

Java has two or three GUI toolkits if I recall correctly, one of them (Swing?) doesn't use native widgets.

Never tested it on Mac OS X, but theoretically there should be no troubles.

It has two officially supported toolkits, although I have seen other toolkits available by other developers.

The two toolkits are AWT and Swing. AWT is the older one, and has closer ties to native widgets.

Swing is the newer toolkit, using the MVC architecture, allowing for pluggable "look-and-feel"s. The look and feel can be totally custom, or it can include native components to make it look like a native application.

One of the biggest issues the Java team had with AWT was that different OSes sometimes offered features in their native interfaces that others didn't. This meant that the AWT toolkit could only really support features that all OSes had, and features that only some of them had were ignored.

This meant that AWT became a lowest common denominator toolkit with only the most basic controls available. The designers of Java wanted to overcome that limitation, and Swing was born.

Swing's controls totally separate out the application code from the drawing code. This allowed the Java developers to add as much functionality as they wanted to their controls without having to worry about OS limitations or differences.

Java distributions for most platforms also include a native look and feel, which attempts to make Java applications look native to the OS.  In the past, yes, they were largely drawn using Java's own 2D APIs, but starting with Java 5 they are increasingly using native controls when possible.

Microsoft and Apple created their own native bindings - which breaks Java's "write once, run everywhere" philosphy. But with newer versions of Java using hardware accelertion for Java 2D and newer versions of Swing using native controls when possible, the differences between using Swing and using a native toolkit is becoming less of an issue.

Now we have "theoretically". In practice there are many caveats. And it is the same for .NET.

I understand that AWT uses native controls on each platform while Swing draws controls itself. That makes AWT programs look more native while Swing programs always look the same (and never quite native).

.NET has the following GUI toolkits:

Windows Forms - uses native Win32 controls on Windows and draws itself on Linux and Mac OS X ("Linux" represents here Linux and any X11-using UNIX)

Windows Presentation Foundation - uses native Vista/XP controls on Windows and doesn't work on Linux and Mac OS X

GTK# - uses native controls on GTK-based Linux and draws itself on Windows and Mac OS X

Cocoa# and other Cocoa bindings - uses native controls on Mac OS X and doesn't work on Linux and Windows

The common denominators are Windows Forms and Gtk#. Those programs look nice on Windows and Linux respectively but not so nice on Mac OS X.

AWT draws contols natively, yes.

Swing is skinnable, and each skin is written in Java. Most downloads of Java include the Metal skin and a skin that looks like the OS. In recent versions of Java some Java skins that look like the OS are using native APIs to render their controls.

. . . and most Java devs will use the term "look and feel" rather than "skin." Don't ask me why, that's just what they do.

As soon as 7 is available, I will line up with other crazed consumers on"blitz lines" and trample some poor security guy to death in an act of Darwinian consumerism.

Did you know that all hardware manufatured in the last three years supports 64-bit?

Why would users want to upgrade to Windows 7 if their PC is over three years old?

I second the 64-bit only wish.  It is a must for software developers to produce quality software at a low price.  Otherwise the price will reflect testing on Windows 7 32-bit which only a small number of people are even going to use going forward.  If your PC supports 64-bit and you are upgrading, why would you upgrade to 32-bit?

Since the business OS of choice will remain XPP for some time to come, long enough for hardware to cycle, won't matter.  So 64-bit only should be no problem for W7.

When is the target date for Windows7?? anyone know, also yes i will make the switch, one of the reasons i didnt purchase another copy of Vista in 64 bit, even with my pc being a couple of months old, i will just wait for 7, I do know all my hardware is 64 bit ready, but i couldnt justify spending the extra dough on a 64 bit copy of Vista, i did contact microsoft as i had heard for a small fee they would give you a 64bit copy, but as i had purchased an OEM version, it disqualifies it, they told me to contact the manufacturer of my pc, so i had to contact myself, (Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit is what i am running) even though a copy of 64 bit is like 89 bucks OEM at MicroCenter, that is 89 bucks i could use on some other gadgets or hardware

@jmurph1

The target date per M$ is 1/2010. Sooo...probably will be later than that judging from Vista and XP.

There appears to be an Itanium version of Windows 7:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=66646156-f3e6-48d7-be22-de1772dd1884&displaylang=en

I wasn't expecting a new windows so soon after Windows Vista. I haven't even had time to upgrade yet (because frankly, there hasn't been a reason to do so).

I usually let a few years pass by before updating to the latest windows, so that it's actually stable and.. y'know, usable.

hurray, another hype to follow and be disappointed by

personally I just dislike M$'s way of abusing pretended technical problems as marketing strategies. I have a linux box with 16 gigs ram. 32 bit. no problems. another box with a 4 tb raid5. no problems again. there ARE no technical limitations as microsoft likes to put it. sure, in the beginning the magical 2 gig ram limit was there - linux solved it rather fast with PAE, in windows it is solvable too, but why? you can simply get the users to buy another full version of another useless OS (probably a new UI and the former limitations being raised a bit)

apart from that - I kinda look forward to 7 too

32 bit doesn't bother me that much. sure, if 64 would be enforced, maybe strange companies like adobe would finally start porting too - like bringing a fully working 64 version of flash. but until then, I probably stay with 32, its just so much easier (yeah yeah, says the linux-freak *g*)

Maybe lazy developers who don't know how to manage their own memory. But few are the single applications that honestly need more than 2GB of RAM. And I've never seen a game that is actually doing enough to justify taking up that much space.

Developers just want the freedom to allocate memory and forget about it. Gone are the days when programmers were responsible about this sort of thing.

You are not quite right. Yes, most software should work with < 32 MB RAM, but it requires more than 2 GB. However there are some applications, that in principle need huge amount of memory. AI applications, image/video processing and many others.... I do use 32 bit systems, but if there is a new operating system, the fewer versions it has, the better it is for us programmers (and users). So 64 bit Windows 7 with support of old 32 bit applications would be great. Many versions of the same system = mess.

I'm not sure what Microsoft has to gain from making a 32 bit version of Windows 7. Is it to address compatability issues with older software for people who stuck with XP instead of going for Vista? Seems a bit unlikely, since they most likely would be power users who could easily just opt to dual boot XP 32 bit and Windows 7 x64 (which I will be doing).

I just don't see a point in a new 32 bit OS at this point. More sales from people with dirt old computers and software? Frankly I think it'll only hold the software and game industry back by forcing them to either program for both systems separately, or make them stick with programming for 32 bit and thus never take proper advantage of the new hardware we have.

I believe the 32-bit version is to run on Intel Atom based computers. (Probably already been said earlier in the thread).

Regarding Java GUI frameworks, there are a whole load of them designed to address issues with Swing (i.e. that most things built with it look ugly). SWT (used in Eclipse) uses native components and I'm pretty sure it has a Mac implementation. I expect you're meant to be using JavaFX now though.

On the Java versus .NET thing in general, I don't think there's any chance of .NET overtaking Java in overall share. Ok, you can use slightly outdated versions of .NET on Unix machines now, but you can find the JVM on just about anything with a microprocessor. In terms of actual merit rather than just popularity, I reckon it comes out fairly even honours. C# is better than Java overall*, but then Scala is probably better than either, and you have hundreds of language implementations on each platform by now. .NET has better Windows GUI tools, generics information at runtime, tail recursion. and Visual Studio. The JVM has, well, it has all the masses of tools and libraries built for it during ten years of being the dominant language. Plus, a lot of these are free and open source. Frankly, as long as no-one tries to make me use pointers again, I will happily work with either platform.

*C# should rip off Java's enums though, they're really very good. Also, generic WeakReferences in the platform library please.

You can run .NET (and Silverlight) code on an iPhone, but no Java.

Just when I was getting ready to purchase a new shiny family PC (HP Touchsmart) a new OS is coming AND it supposedly has better touchscreen functionality.  I gues I will wait rather than having to "upgrade" the OS.

unless of course it is really 2010 or so...Don't want to wait that long