Microsoft has been working on a version of XP for x64 hardware for almost two years now. Much has changed since Microsoft tentatively announced support for the fledgling computer platform in April 2003. First, the x64 platform has shown enormous street creds, with Intel essentially copying AMD's original design, thus assuring that x64, and not Itanium, would be the mainstream 64-bit computing platform of the future. Second, Microsoft has elevated XP x64, its desktop-oriented x64 operating system, from being a niche player to being the basis for its next mainstream OS platform.
Early versions of XP x64 weren't pretty and lacked significant functionality. But more recent releases, like the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) build the company issued last fall and the RC2 version that shipped earlier this month, show a maturity and attention to detail that was previously missing. XP x64 is still a subset, of sorts, of XP 32-bit, but the missing features in XP x64 were dropped with good reason.
Rating: 3/5
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