Isn’t it Time for 64Bit?

I’m getting frustrated with application vendors and their support for 64-bit O/Ses. I’d admit that a year or two ago the consumer-level device support for 64-bit O/Ses was a bit weak, but considering I can now walk into Best Buy and pick up a consumer-grade laptop that runs Vista 64, the major software vendors really need to get their act together. In the last few weeks I’ve been bitten by a “we don’t support 64-bit” story a number of times and it feels ridiculous… Maybe i’m an edge case, but every Vista Machine I own is 64-bit (work laptop, home desktop, my wife’s laptop, etc).

• I was writing code this AM attempting to integrate with QuickBooks 2008 and was forced to go back and re-compile with the processor-specific x86 switch due to the fact that their SDK doesn’t support 64-bit O/S.
• I had purchased a 3-computer license to ETrust Anti-Virus (Computer Associates) and upon recently replacing my home desktop and my wife’s computer I had to throw away those licenses and replace them with another vendor’s product because CA can’t figure out how to build an AntiVirus app for 64-bit Vista
• At work, I am forced to run a 32-bit Vista Virtual Machine because the tool provided by our workflow vendor for designing business processes doesn’t run on 64-bit (they claim they’ve been working on a 64-bit version and it should be out “any time”… but that was February…)
• At work we’ve been working on an electronic records system and are fighting with the vendor because they don’t support 64-bit OS on the server… seriously? An enterprise-scale server-based product that has been around for a few years doesn’t yet support 64-bit? I’m amazed…