Quote - As the default standard CPU for Windows becomes a Core2Quad and 8GIG RAM only costs a few hundred dollars, an OS that frolics in 1-1.5 GIG is a joy...if it delivers a rewarding desktop experience. In otherwords, one person's "resource hog" is another persons 'higher level experience."

That about sums it up - Opera

Even now here in Australia - most of the home user market computers now being sold are 64 bit dual core - dealers are not pushing 32 bit computers at all - apart from the notebook market.

The change is coming and people will have to live with it - the motherboards etc just won't be available anymore to replace "aging" computers that 12 months ago were state of the art.

My machine came in at under $AUD 1000 without an O/S and is as follows:-

AMD X2 5200+ X64
4 GB Ram
DVD RW
8 in 1 Card Reader
320 GB SATA
NVidia 8600 GT

And at that the dealer who put the bits together didn't consider it a dream machine - he was only amazed at the amount of ram I ordered.

We are now seeing similar machines being advertised to the home market with 2 GB ram and Vista for $AUD 1100 - 1200.

My motherboard will take up to 8GB ram - so I figure if I expand to that I may get away without an upgrade for maybe 2- 3 years.

And  as for the bloated Vista thing - well M$ aren't making XP or 2000 any longer so people will have to learn to live with it if they want to upgrade their computers.

The there is also this
www.vlite.net/about.html
Seems as though it supports 64 bit as well.
www.start64.com/index.php

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
Robert A. Heinlein

11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-11900K @ 3.50GHz   3.50 GHz
64.0 GB (63.9 GB usable)
Geforce RTX 3060 12 GB
Windows 11 Pro