Thank you Zubaz, I now know a heck of lot more about what I didn't know anything about before. Now all I have to do is figure out if I need to remember it!  

All kidding aside, I believe I now understand better why Stardock has/is taking it's position pertaining to 64bit versions of XP and Vista.   

Just got my first copy of WB, just to find out version 6 doesn't work with XP x64.
*mails support@Stardock*

XP x64 isn't as bad as some people think though, support could be a little better but I see no reason to upgrade to Vista other than autoCAD not working, but that doesn't work on Vista x64 either.

Lain8: I had just sent something out about that internally. I have now emailed you what you will need to fix this problem.

To anyone else experiencing this problem with WindowBlinds 5.51 on an x64 system, please email support@stardock.com.

Thanks!  

-Mike
[Stardock Support]

Zubaz, what part of "Premier Performance", "Greater Flexibility", "Multiprocessing and multicore processor support" and "Increased reliability and security" does not offer benefit to the home user? Not to be a jerk, but those things are why I do continue to use XP 64.

The main question is of course how much work it is to adapt wb 6 for XP x64 systems, if it's mainly the same with a few slight differences then it would be doable.

But I understand from Stardock staff that XP x64 support is in the works, so us who use that OS just have to hold our breath for a bit, like we're used to.

Yeah yeah Zubaz, I know... I was just posting my reply because you were using that marketing release to justify your point that there was nothing in there.. I know it's mostly the regular BS you'd hear from any software release.  

However, a few points do deserve mentioning. While many apps themselves haven't been optimized for x64 yet (because they need to be coded natively), Office 2007 is one that is, and it's probably one of the more used apps out there. In addition, while most applications don't really know how to multithread yet, that doesn't mean that the OS will stay on one processor. Most of my stuff runs better on my system simply because one of the processors generally takes over the "background system tasks", while the other runs whatever my foreground application is. I can also assign processes to run on one particular processor with just a few clicks natively in Windows itself.

The average home user COULD benefit from XP64 now, though driver support is still spotty in "consumer-level" hardware. I do agree that the market will continue to diminish for a bit, especially after Vista releases SP1 and perhaps gets some of their act together for that 64-bit version. Myself, I'm planning on skipping Vista entirely (aside from anything that I MUST run on it... and nothing's compelled me that much yet.   ) and waiting for Windows 2009/11. I just hope that we XP64 users are able to at least get some sort of "unsupported" (but still patched) version out there. We're pretty used to being last in the support category, being self-sufficient, and generally having to be our own debuggers anyway.

Add me to the XP x64 list! I stopped by to take another look at WB after receiving an email from you guys (I'm a registered 0.90 owner) and was about to purchase version 6 when the demo refused to install.

My $0.02 :

I stopped using OD and WB when I moved to XP x64 a couple of years ago. The need for more memory, multiple core support, faster (64 bit) I/O was critical for my small business, and I've been running XP64 stably with no problems for over a year now. This is a 99.83% uptime system (less than 1 hour/month downtime), and when I trialled Vista x64 "Ultimate", it was "ultimately", hasta la Vista .

For some users, Vista will be perfect. For most others, especially "high end" users (and please note, I'm not categorising anyone based on their use of the software - I consider myself a gamer AND a business user/developer), XP x64 is significantly more stable, if not as pretty to look at.

I regularly deal with 12+ gigabyte audio files, and 100+ gig video files, and Vista just couldn't be relied on to deal with large data movements. Period. (This is on a quadcore AMD board with 16G ECC RAM and 3.2Tb mass storage, with a plain old ATI X1600 with 64-bit drivers that mostly work well). I have a number of customers who tried to get Wifi working on Vista (32 and 64) and it's a nightmare, with bugger all support from the hardware developers (who are looking beyond Vista, since it's basically a new UI and some security layers glued on to an XP core - and I speak here with my MSCE hat on) AND from MS. (Google "wifi problems vista" and you'll see what I mean).

So Vista is no longer on my radar - I fought that 800-pound gorilla for over 3 weeks until I had to give up in disgust and go back to XP64. (This was on a pretty tame hardware system as I've described - nothing bleeding-edge or beta on this box).

The sudden appeal of multiple core systems (when a quad core computer is advertised on Harvey Norman, you know multicore is now mainstream) means that most multiple CPU users will probably get Vista bundled, so I can understand that's where the development budget is going to go to. But there's still a significant minority of us XP x64 users out here who can't (or won't) trust Vista for normal use. Most (but maybe not all) of us have supported or at least tried to troubleshoot x64 driver and hardware issues, and I don't see such a "self supporting" user base as being a significant support load. And as one of that minority, I'd definitely appreciate some cosmetic surgery support for XP x64.

NextStep and Workshelf are supported on XP64, it'd be great if we could do some app skinning as well...

So please consider some support for WindowBlinds on XP x64, even if it's only for the current release and no further, it would be a great bonus for users like us.

Ummmm... there is no version of Office 2007 x64. It still installs in the Program Files x86 folder. I would like more information on your statement. Could you point me in the right direction? Thanks

Since no one from SD updated this post, I will post a link. Support for XP 64 added. I downloaded and it works!

WWW Link

Great job StarDock. Works without any noticeable slowdowns while playing games.
Although I have a small problem with it (since WB5.51), I gotta say. Ecliz Deluxe is the best skin for WB6.

Nice work there!

Brgds,
Sergej

Thank you for adding XP x64 support back in. I hope it continues in the future.