64-bit Windows XP is a bit of an obscurity, it never was in that huge circulation and if I recall right had very limmited driver support. It was never meant to be replacement OS for people wanting to use 64-bit CPU's and Windows, just a game opener for MS itself, so that they coudl show that they do understand the architechture.

Goddamnit, I DEMAND BIOWARE TO SUPPORT DOS IN THE NEXT MASS EFFECT AND DRAGON AGE!!!

To hell with DOS, I demand OS/2 Warp support. It already can run Win3.11 software, so adding support for other Windows versions should be a cake walk.

Ya, I wanted to end my dual-boot woes by transitioning from x86, but in the end I only used x64 for audio editing work because of the higher RAM allocation. I'm greatful for W7, I must say :)

Who?

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/ace_of_bioware/page1

Folly? Yeah, I'm sure their success largely depended on Windows XP gamers.

Move ON already!
I'm surprised XP even has the hardware support any more, as in if you have a machine good enough to run Mass Effect 3 then I'm surprised you can find the drivers to run that ancient OS on your shiny new kit
Each generation of hardware makes this less and less likely and the next generation of consoles has now been announced...

I don't see a problem with game publishers dropping support for old Windows versions in their new games.

I do see a big problem with either the publishers, or digital store services, retroactively dropping support so that you can't play even your old games on the old Windows, for which you originally bought it. If I bought a game long time ago for my old Windows PC where I know it works, I should be able to continue playing it there as long as that system works. Just like I can still play my old PS2 games on my PS2, and not have to buy a PS3 or PS4 in order to continue playing them (and hope they even work there)..

E.g. Valve (Steam) has already done the latter at least once.

I learned that XP had 64 bit version today.

Some things actually were better in XP, mainly that MS seems to have changed or removed some abilities from later versions, either because they thought no one cares, or because of digital rights management.

As it happens, it seems I will have to use one of my XP PCs soon, just because I need to record audio files from Munt (MT-32 emulator). If I understood correctly, in XP I can simply tell Windows to record "anything I hear" digitally without using any analog loop cables or anything. Ie. I can have a DOSBox game playing beautiful MT-32 music, and at the same time record that straight to a digital file with the Windows Sound Recorder. I've yet to try it though.

For the life of me, I can't figure out how to do the same in Windows 7 (if someone knows, please tell!). Even when I google for it, the MS pages just seem to state that in Windows 7 you can use the Sound Recorder only to record audio coming through an analog cable into your line-in or mic ports (ie. analog audio to digital), not record directly any audio playing in Windows into a file.

Is this really true? The only reason I could see for them to prevent this is so that people are not able to digitally record copyrighted music playing in the background etc. So, remove features because they might be misused by the end-user? Logical, and preferable to the corporate bitches, but still an inconvenience to the end-users.

The other thing is how much harder it is to work with anything related to MIDI (game) music in Vista and later. You can't easily change the target for MIDI (e.g. Munt), or change MIDI volume, etc., without using 3rd party software (like BASSMIDI). If they think people don't need to use MIDI music anymore, why didn't they then simply remove the whole ability from newer Windows versions to listen to MIDI files? Remove the MS GS Wavetable Softsynth, while you are at it. That should do it.

After XP it is far harder to do a lot of things. Government organisations like where I work will be keeping XP as long as they can. Some governments are even considering Linux rather than the later versions of windows.

Also many hospitals use XP to run a lot of their equipment. Luckily these do not need to hook up to the net so wont need future upgrades. After XP a lot of laboritory equipment have hardware that will not work on later versions.

Look at windows 8, it is not even worth considering unless you are using a tablet so XP is really one system behind.

I use hot swap drives to boot either XP or 7. XP for me is by far the better operating system. windows 8 never. I will move to Linux or MAC before that.

Look at steam, they have lost interest in windows in the future looking to support Linux instead. EG Steam box.

The only way MS could force people off XP was to drop support for later versions of directX, otherwise XP (32 bit anyway) would have stayed the preferred operating system.

Just my thoughts anyway.

Long live XP

Cheers

...and after :)