Be A Luddite....

….if only this once. We're a week into the Windows XP Professional x64 Edition era (which, editorial accuracy compels me to point out to you, is not the first 64-bit version of Windows; Windows Server 2003 for Itanium-based systems predated it) and whatever bloom might have been on the rose is rapidly fading away. Driver support is limited (and will be for the foreseeable future) beyond what's in Microsoft's bundled class driver suite, and any of you who've ever used a class driver can attest to their limited (and I'm being nice with this choice of adjective) feature sets compared to what you get directly from the peripheral vendor. A limited limit does not a happy computer user make.

Now comes word, courtesy of a recently published eWeek article, that neither McAfee nor Symantec plans to support x64 operating systems anytime soon. Running Windows without antivirus protection? That's a sure-fire recipe for disaster if I ever heard one. And don't forget, when you upgrade to the x64 operating system, you void your license to your prior-generation 32-bit version and therefore can't revert. Being a technology early adopter has never been a gold-paved path to happiness, unless of course you thrive on little to no sleep, high blood pressure, and migraine headaches. This time, though, even the most diehard among you might want to rethink your 'damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead' style.