The OLD Efficiency

As Microsoft makes its way around the country (of USA that is) to promote Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2, I had the chance to attend their "technical briefing" at the Boston, Massachusetts location. The reason why is simple: score a free copy of Windows 7. Is there any other reason? Well, getting to know a little about some of the stuff that is coming soon and new is also good. But sadly I am not much of a programmer.

There are two different sessions. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning was geared towards developers. The afternoon was geared towards IT people. I attended both, mostly. After the session was over, the people walked out and were handed a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, an interesting surprise as Windows 7 Ultimate is Microsoft's highest tiered edition of Windows and contains everything that Home Premium and Professional has and then some.

As I have opted to depart early during the afternoon session, I went to the registration desk to attempt at redeeming a 2nd copy of Windows 7. And it worked. I now have 2 copies for which I can use. And here I thought I would walk away with 1 in the end. But it turns out that wasn't the case. It did not even occur to me what I will be getting, which you will know in a bit.

After a train ride home and then settling down, I had no time to really install it as I had to prepare the main rig for installing. That means backing up various files and making sure I don't lose any settings. After dinner and after looking over to see what else is needed to be preserved, I put the disc in and rebooted. After a format and a couple of reboot, the rig got to the desktop and the first thing I did to check is the System Properties. This is what I found:

I could not believe it. I spent several hours listening to them promoting and hyping their stuff and all I got was a 32bit install disc?! Well, it does say 32bit disc on the DVD. Yet you'd think Microsoft would be smart enough to promote x64 (aka 64-bit) and try to phase out x86 (aka 32-bit). C'mon man. That's just plain retarded. You call that the "New Efficiency"?? That's not new. That's OLD.

So take a good guess on what I had to do. Yep, I had to look for a torrent for the x64 build of the same OS. Can't Microsoft anticipate that people would prefer the x64 build over the x86 build? Microsoft is trying to push their Windows 7 certification to include 64bit, a sign that they want to push 64bit so that the hardware works in 64bit version of Windows 7. How do they expect the people who attended these events to help push forward the progress of 64bit computing when we're given 32bit code on disc? This is the most pathetic and retarded thing I have ever went through. Never mind the fact that I got it for free. If I was stuck with 32bit Windows 7, it would be worthless to me even as free! There's no point in going with 32bit Windows if the hardware of today that run Vista is more than capable of handling a 64bit operating system.

It's quite moronic that I have to resort to looking for an illegal copy of Windows 7 x64 when I have a legitimate key. I could have understood the distribution of the 32bit OS had this happen 2-3 years ago. But with today's hardware and software, a 64bit OS should be the preferred form, instead of being spoon-fed 32bit code. I would have been just fine had Microsoft gave people options to get a 64bit ISO or disc using some redemption method. But nooooooooooooooooooo.... Bunch of idiots...