Los Angeles (CA) - At the annual WinHEC hardware engineering conference, Microsoft General Manager Bill Laing proclaimed that Windows Server 2008 will be the company's last 32-bit operating system. He added that it was "the right thing for the industry".

Laing clarified that there would be no more 32-bit operating systems for either servers or clients and that "everything" will transition to 64-bit. Some of Microsoft's higher end products like Exchange Server 2007 are already 64-bit.

Of course not too many people are surprised because we all knew this day would come. Microsoft has continuously touted 64-bit computing and Chairman Bill Gates mentioned the benefits of the expanded memory space in both his WinHEC keynote and his speech at the CEO Summit in Redmond Washington.