Microsoft unveiled an alpha version of Windows 2000 for Intel´s 64bit processor IA64 at its developers show yesterday and provided more details of the next two releases of the operating system.

Speaking at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Florida, chairman Bill Gates told delegates that moving from a 32bit to 64bit development environment would be "much easier" than the previous move from 16bit to 32bit. He said there is a new instruction set that Intel and partners have "poured billions of dollars into".

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