RE: Upgrade to XyWin or Not?

[Peter Evans peterev@xxxxxxxx]

Paul Thornett:

>> >Windows 95 . . . is substantially 16-bit. . . . NT4, on the other hand,
>> >. . . is totally 32-bit. . . .

My intermittently humble self:

>> Am I the only person here not to know what this means? (Something to do
>> with the number of bytes of RAM addressable directly and without chicanery?

PT:

>Precisely right. . . . In 16-bit systems a word is 16 bits, thus the
>maximum numeric value capable of being expressed is 65,536 (64k). . . .

I'm coming down with a cold and so my brain may be firing on a mere three
cylinders or so. But I thought RAM was more usually denominated in
megabytes (or, of course, bytes, kilobytes, gigabytes, etc.) and that DOS
was infamous for its limit of one measly megabyte of directly addressable
RAM. A megabyte is 2^20 bytes; a byte is 2^3 bits--so isn't a megabyte
2^23 bits and DOS a "20-bit" (or "23-bit"?) OS?