Wintel is the one true path to happiness, confessed a born-again Stratus suit today. Speaking at a preview of the upcoming Win2K Service Pack, Stratus' David Chalmers extolled the virtues of Intel hardware and Microsoft operating systems, but stopped short of swallowing Chipzilla's plans for the move to 64bit computing.

For the non-stop vendor (oh, sorry, that was the other lot, wasn't it?) is planning to stick with 32 bit processors until the back end of next year, when Intel's Mckinley hits the streets.

Register fascinating factoid 366

99.5 per cent availability sounds pretty good, but Stratus points out that this equates to 43 hours 45 minutes downtime a year. 99.9 per cent would obviously be better, but this means you can't take cash off the punters for a staggering 8.75 hours a year. 99.999 per cent availability is much, much better, only adding up to a measly five minutes offline each year.

No one could explain to this reporter what the implications of a 24/7/365 service were when a leap year happened along. ®