[reneky]

> I understand emacs's architectural reasoning for it -- and that is a choice.

I think the choice they make is to spend their very limited time on more useful features. I'm sure many of the core Emacs developers would be very happy if someone would fix this limitation. It would be a very invasive change, a fair amount of work.

[jrockway]

Any change on 32-bit machines will require special CPU instructions, massive Lisp slowdowns, or massive integer math slowdowns.

Considering you can't even buy a new 32-bit machine anymore, however, I don't really see this as a major problem.

[koenigdavidmj]

>Considering you can't even buy a new 32-bit machine anymore, however

Netbooks.

[dagw]

Most netbooks that have come out in the past 6 month have a 64-bit CPU. Only the old atom N2xx series is 32bit, and they are rapidly being phased out.