> coz it looks bad. besides that it's slower and harder to program. and if 16 bit color is all your computer can do then it must be really old and slow and really annoying to watch my viewer with it. to give you an idea, on my 2200 MHZ it just barely runs at 2 frames per second in 640x480x32 with a really simple model.

I can't judge how much more difficult it is to program 16 bit, but I can tell you it is sure A LOT faster then 32 bit.
Run almost any game or OGL program in 16bit and then in 32 bit. I've tested it out on 3dsmax with OGL and 16 bit was almost 4 times faster!!!
I'd say you're burning the candle from the wrong end...