Forget about the possibility of Windows 8, the next iteration of the Windows operating system planned for 2011 – 2012 getting support for 128-bit processor architectures. Fact is that the translation to 64-bit CPUs is still in full swing, and Windows 7 is yet to get all the love. While 64-bit is the future, 32-bit computers continue to indicate strong resilience. And it is clear that customers continuing to run machines with x86 processors are not necessarily in a hurry to throw their old computers out and buy x64 PCs. The initial hurdles that have managed to plague x64 Windows platforms, including the lack of driver and hardware support and application-compatibility problems, continue to reverberate from the past even after the majority of issues have been dealt with.

Joe Faulhaber, from the Microsoft Malware Protection Center revealed that Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 was downloaded over 1.5 million times in just the first week on the market. Out of all the machines protected by the free security solution from Microsoft, formerly codenamed Morro, only a third of those also running Windows 7 feature the 64-bit edition of the operating system.

“The Windows 7 numbers are spectacular for an operating system that hasn't yet released for global availability. Even better, about 1/3rd of Windows 7 Microsoft Security Essentials machines are 64-bit, which is even more resistant to malware than 32-bit due to PatchGuard,” Faulhaber noted.

Back in August 2008, Microsoft revealed that the number of 64-bit computers connecting to Windows Update had suffered a dramatic increase compared with that of 32-bit machines. But taking into consideration the statistics provided by Faulhaber, it appears that the number of x86 computers still outweighs that of x64 PCs.

A piece of good news for Microsoft is the fact that Windows 7 suffered the least number of malware infections compared with Windows Vista and Windows XP. Microsoft revealed that, while malicious code was detected on 16% of Windows 7 PCs, malware compromised 52% of XP and 32% of Vista computers running Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0.

Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 is available for download here.