(Nick Maclaren) wrote in message ...
The real issue is whether the Itanium port has been done competently,
or by simply spawning off another completely unportable code stream.

Historically Microsoft *seems* to have always chosen to "spawn off
an incompatible branch". All their products have to have a unique
set of features, the concept of having identical functionality across
different platforms is always broken. (They do seem to have
some grasp of "core" vs "extra" functionality.)

I happen to believe that these decisions are usually driven by marketing,
and not by any technical inability inside Microsoft, although I could be
wrong. Clearly the lack of uniformity has great costs inside Microsft's
development and support organizations; I can only assume that somehow
this is made up for in extra sales. Probably in the same way that
each toothpaste company now has twenty different variations ("shelf
space").

Tim.