Windows Vista 32-bit vs 64-bit
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Ed.Poore wrote:
I've only got experience with VMWare but it's just released a feature called Unity where the VM windows appear on your main desktop (with a small icon to show they're virtualised.
Is this VMware for Macs you're talking about, or'd they finally port it to the PC version?
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Seems silly to not allow installation on 64 bit machine. I can't think of a single security issue that is created by moving to a broader word length. Does the idiot who made the rule have a reason? Can you challenge it?
I might just be a licensing issue, I have no idea honestly why or who made that decision.
CleaKO
"Now, a man would have opened both gates, driven through and not bothered to close either gate." - Marc Clifton (The Lounge)
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Been running it for about a year. It's OK. No real problems to speak of. But I don't really see any speed improvement. (4 gig RAM). In fact, I think VS2008 runs kind of slow - but I have only run this version ov VS on my 64 bit system so I have nothing to compare it to. Back when I was using 32 bit Vista I had VS2003. So who knows? Maybe VS2008 is just slow for everybody. There is not a lot of applications out there that actually take advantage of the 64 bit OS (at least, not that I use). My biggest gripe: there is no Adobe Flash for 64 bit Internet Explorer. So when using 64 bit IE, many web sites do not display properly (e.g. Yahoo mail). "No problem", says I, "I'll just use 32 bit IE" (it's included in the OS). I mean, there is no speed difference that I can detect between the 2 versions when surfing or downloading. So who cares? Well....Vista cares. I have found no way to change the default internet app from 64 bit to 32 bit IE. So yes, when I want to surf the web I can click my shortcut to 32 bit IE and there are no problems. But anytime Vista opens a default web browser it always opens 64 bit IE. This is not a major gripe. I'd say I curse this problem only maybe a once a week. I would not reccomend upgrading just for the sake of upgrading. From what I've read, you'll be better off just waiting a few months and going Windows 7. But if your only choice is Vista 64 - don't be afraid of it. It's just as good and just as bad as it's 32 bit cousin.
I dont think much will change hardware wise from Vista to Windows 7 so I dont know if there is any reason not to go ahead and make the leap other than the fact that I will need to buy the Windows 7 OS when it comes out rather than just getting the OEM version on the machine. I will need to upgrade my laptop anyway to Windows 7 to hopefully fix the few bugs I have had issues with so far in Vista.
CleaKO
"Now, a man would have opened both gates, driven through and not bothered to close either gate." - Marc Clifton (The Lounge)
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My work wont even allow a 64-bit VPN install/connection so I dont get the benefit of experiencing strange connection issues. I am torn here, if I decide to go with a 64-bit desktop then I will have to do all of my login from home work on the laptop. I guess I can then get a docking station and that would alleviate most of those issues :).
CleaKO
"Now, a man would have opened both gates, driven through and not bothered to close either gate." - Marc Clifton (The Lounge)
We use the old Cisco VPN Client, and Cisco refuses to offer a 64-bit version for Windows (they do have one for Linux). If your employer uses Cisco VPN, then maybe they don't allow it because it isn't an option. Would love to have 64-bit Vista at home. It seems silly to me to have 64-bit processors and not be able to take advantage of them. But since I often work from home through VPN, I did't install V64 at home when I had the chance. I have it on my machine here at work and have no problems at all, even with VB6.
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Figmo2 wrote:
My biggest gripe: there is no Adobe Flash for 64 bit Internet Explorer.
I have to agree. I am starting to think that Adobe is just being a jerk and refusing to play. They seem to be the only holdout that I can find. I am however seeing a lot of sites switching to Silverlight and you DO have x64 support there.
I did see a press release a couple of months ago saying that Adobe was starting work on 64 bit flash. But who knows how long it will take, and even if that division will survive any shrinkage due to the global economy. I get the impression that it's just on their "one of these days" TODO list.
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"I noticed that 64-bit Video Card drivers sometimes get a delayed released compared to 32-bit ones. So if gaming is your deal, I wouldn't recommend it as you might not benefit from the most current video drivers." Maybe if you have a card from an obscure vendor. Both Nvidia and ATI release 64 bit drivers at the same time as the 32 bit driversw. NO exceptions.
Last year I had this issue with Nvidia drivers. The latest releases have been published together but last year they didn't. Until recently in Nvidia site the Windows XP 64 drivers were not up to date. Or maybe I just missed something.
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I did see a press release a couple of months ago saying that Adobe was starting work on 64 bit flash. But who knows how long it will take, and even if that division will survive any shrinkage due to the global economy. I get the impression that it's just on their "one of these days" TODO list.
I do believe there is a alpha/beta version they have recently posted. It was a failure for me however. I was unable to get it to work properly with the 64 bit browser. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/[^]
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Last year I had this issue with Nvidia drivers. The latest releases have been published together but last year they didn't. Until recently in Nvidia site the Windows XP 64 drivers were not up to date. Or maybe I just missed something.
hmm, interesting. Perhaps you had an older card? I purchased a gforce8800 GT when they first shipped and have had it in a 64 bit gaming system since then. They have always released the 64 bit drivers concurrently with the 32 bit drivers, even well into last year. Perhaps lesser models have some lag?
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I just had a crappy experience at Best Buy. I choose to just buy a computer out of the box rather than mess with building one. I went to the store to see what was available for a new desktop and I could not find any 32-bit Vista machines by HP. I asked one of the sales people about it and he proceeded to let me know that I was silly for wanting 32-bit (he apparently has 2 64-bit systems at home) and that there are no compatibility issues to worry about and that they are awesome. Well I know for a fact that my employer will not allow 64-bit VPN software to be installed on a 64-bit system so that is a good reason not to go there. Will you please let me know what you think of the 2 systems and other than the obvious potential benefits over time is it work buying a 64-bit system now, today?
CleaKO
"Now, a man would have opened both gates, driven through and not bothered to close either gate." - Marc Clifton (The Lounge)
Go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/1033/ordermedia/default.mspx[^] for an alternate CD (if it's Vista Ultimate, you'll get 32bit + 64bit discs. For anything else, you'll only get the one you ask for (ie 32bit)). You only pay P&P.
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All I do is work (no games) and I've found that 64-bit Vista is like a totally different OS than 32-bit. I really love it. My only complaint is that there's not support for Visual Studio 6.0 and some of the older applications. There may be hacks for that and if so I hope someone shares them here. I gotta say though that in case of XP and Vista I love 64 over 32 and I can tell a big difference.
I've installed Vista 64 on my work computer and I don't have any major problems except for VPN. I have a Cisco VPN that will not install on my 64-bit machine. I have to run it in a VM. In there the connection is a bit flakey. I use VB6 everyday. There are some odd issues, but in general, I don't have a problem with it. - When you open a VBP that has a new control or a new version of a control, you get errors. Just close the VBP without saving and open it again. No problems after that. - If you open a VBP from a write-protected area, it will sometimes not let you "save project as...". - You get a "path not found" when double-clicking a VBP from a mapped drive if VB6 is set to "Run as Administrator". Just click open within VB and it'll work fine. - Run VB6 as administrator to compile DLL's and debug web pages. I think Microsoft screwed up with the syswow64 directory structure, but otherwise I'm happy with 64-bit. Fred.
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Since you mention 64-bit Vista and VPN, I have been having problems with this combination. I was earlier using 32-bit Vista on my laptop and had installed VPN to connect to my client network. No problems there. After I upgraded to 64-bit Vista, I've been having a lot of problems with VPN connectivity. So now, I'm using another box for the VPN software. It's probably something to do with me, but I couldn't fix it so far. So you can either do this or reinstall the computer with a 32 bit OS if your employer has a license for it. Otherwise 64-bit systems are great. You will not be able to run 16-bit programs though.
«_Superman_»
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hmm, interesting. Perhaps you had an older card? I purchased a gforce8800 GT when they first shipped and have had it in a 64 bit gaming system since then. They have always released the 64 bit drivers concurrently with the 32 bit drivers, even well into last year. Perhaps lesser models have some lag?
I don't know if lesser models have a lag but mine is not that old, it is a 7900GTX. I don't know if it is the XP 64 that had a lag... or if it was for my model in particular. I know I had this issue. Now it is not an issue anymore, latest 64 bit release is up to date (Jan 22).
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I don't know if lesser models have a lag but mine is not that old, it is a 7900GTX. I don't know if it is the XP 64 that had a lag... or if it was for my model in particular. I know I had this issue. Now it is not an issue anymore, latest 64 bit release is up to date (Jan 22).
Unified driver release's currently go back to the 6000 series, 5000 and earlier lag behind and being different drivers than the newer ones won't work in vista multi-GPU configurations.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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I just had a crappy experience at Best Buy. I choose to just buy a computer out of the box rather than mess with building one. I went to the store to see what was available for a new desktop and I could not find any 32-bit Vista machines by HP. I asked one of the sales people about it and he proceeded to let me know that I was silly for wanting 32-bit (he apparently has 2 64-bit systems at home) and that there are no compatibility issues to worry about and that they are awesome. Well I know for a fact that my employer will not allow 64-bit VPN software to be installed on a 64-bit system so that is a good reason not to go there. Will you please let me know what you think of the 2 systems and other than the obvious potential benefits over time is it work buying a 64-bit system now, today?
CleaKO
"Now, a man would have opened both gates, driven through and not bothered to close either gate." - Marc Clifton (The Lounge)
We got a Vista x64 machine from HP through my brother-in-law. I was a little dismayed at first thinking there would be more driver problems, besides all the problems with the 32-bit system. I have NO problems running Vista X64 [over 4 months now :)]. It's as if Vista was meant to run on a x64 bit system. A friend came over to set me up on our church website and he was floored. He couldn't believe how well out system ran, vs. his. He was pretty upset about it. The other system must either hate accounting software or him. There are some Remote Access features built in, that - for some reason - can't be built into a x32 bit machine. Believe me. My brother and I tried everything we could to get though it. It has to be hardwired. Also think of the addressable memory expansion room, 80 quintillon bytes. That's a heck of a lot of memory! Two words dude, buy.com (with links to many other good sites) Find out all the lowest prices online and compare them to the price of the others. We saved $300+ on ours (with his employee discount added) :) Goodluck, Z
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I just had a crappy experience at Best Buy. I choose to just buy a computer out of the box rather than mess with building one. I went to the store to see what was available for a new desktop and I could not find any 32-bit Vista machines by HP. I asked one of the sales people about it and he proceeded to let me know that I was silly for wanting 32-bit (he apparently has 2 64-bit systems at home) and that there are no compatibility issues to worry about and that they are awesome. Well I know for a fact that my employer will not allow 64-bit VPN software to be installed on a 64-bit system so that is a good reason not to go there. Will you please let me know what you think of the 2 systems and other than the obvious potential benefits over time is it work buying a 64-bit system now, today?
CleaKO
"Now, a man would have opened both gates, driven through and not bothered to close either gate." - Marc Clifton (The Lounge)
It's working fine for me EXCEPT I cannot play DVDs from other regions anymore. I have Japanese Windows in Japan, but a lot of my purchased DVDs are from the US, which is a different region. I used to use DVD4free (or whatever it's called) so I could play my legally purchased movies, but that no longer works, and a VM won't fix that issue. The only choice I have is to dual boot, but so far my copy of Windows XP 32-bit will not install on my new hardware. Needless to say, I haven't been watching my old movies for a while. Actually, I could try to use ripping software that strips the asinine region encoding, but I don't really have space to keep two physical copies of all my movies around. There are lots of other little headaches, but mostly those will go away as more software starts offering 64-bit versions.
Don't let my name fool you. That's my job.
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I just had a crappy experience at Best Buy. I choose to just buy a computer out of the box rather than mess with building one. I went to the store to see what was available for a new desktop and I could not find any 32-bit Vista machines by HP. I asked one of the sales people about it and he proceeded to let me know that I was silly for wanting 32-bit (he apparently has 2 64-bit systems at home) and that there are no compatibility issues to worry about and that they are awesome. Well I know for a fact that my employer will not allow 64-bit VPN software to be installed on a 64-bit system so that is a good reason not to go there. Will you please let me know what you think of the 2 systems and other than the obvious potential benefits over time is it work buying a 64-bit system now, today?
CleaKO
"Now, a man would have opened both gates, driven through and not bothered to close either gate." - Marc Clifton (The Lounge)
In general you should go for 64-bit if it is available because the advantages outway the disadvantages. People have been saying that 32-bit is dead for years. While I don't quite agree with that it is true that 64-bit is becoming mainstream in the home. Advantages 1. More memory. Vista runs fine on 4GB but the more you throw at it the better it gets. 32-bit cannot go above 4GB. 2. Faster. The verdict is still out on this but it is true that the processor can push more data across the wire on a 64-bit system. Some apps, like floating point heavy ones, perform better on 64-bit. 3. Future. 32-bit systems are going away eventually just like 16-bit did. It is hard to say when the 128-bit machines will be coming. Still it is probably better to lean toward 64-bit with all else being equal. 4. Microsoft servers only support 64-bit going forward. This has already happened on some lines like Exchange and others are to follow. 5. You can still run almost any 32-bit app. For the few that just don't like Windows you can use a VM. I have even notice a slight performance increase under the WOW3264 layer for some apps. Disadvantages 1. App compatibility. 16-bit apps don't run at all. You have to use a VM for them. Some 32-bit apps refuse to work under 64-bit. Generally any that rely on a custom driver (TI I'm looking at you) simply won't run. Again a VM will resolve the issue. 2. Installer Issues. Some apps will run under 64-bit just fine but the installer is 16-bit and won't run. Therefore you either have to manually install the app or create a custom installer. 3. Driver support lags behind 32-bit right now. I suspect this to change but it hasn't yet. 64-bit AV support didn't come until after Vista was formally released while 32-bit AV support was available at release. nVidia drivers took months to become stable under Vista. Surprisingly the 64-bit versions where more stable but they were updated less frequently. 4. More space is needed. An unfortunate side effect of the way Windows does compatibility is that you effectively have multiple copies of many files on your machine. Don't even get me started about the whole Program Files (x86) directory annoyance. Therefore make sure you have a larger HDD than you would normally need for 32-bit.
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All I do is work (no games) and I've found that 64-bit Vista is like a totally different OS than 32-bit. I really love it. My only complaint is that there's not support for Visual Studio 6.0 and some of the older applications. There may be hacks for that and if so I hope someone shares them here. I gotta say though that in case of XP and Vista I love 64 over 32 and I can tell a big difference.
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I just had a crappy experience at Best Buy. I choose to just buy a computer out of the box rather than mess with building one. I went to the store to see what was available for a new desktop and I could not find any 32-bit Vista machines by HP. I asked one of the sales people about it and he proceeded to let me know that I was silly for wanting 32-bit (he apparently has 2 64-bit systems at home) and that there are no compatibility issues to worry about and that they are awesome. Well I know for a fact that my employer will not allow 64-bit VPN software to be installed on a 64-bit system so that is a good reason not to go there. Will you please let me know what you think of the 2 systems and other than the obvious potential benefits over time is it work buying a 64-bit system now, today?
CleaKO
"Now, a man would have opened both gates, driven through and not bothered to close either gate." - Marc Clifton (The Lounge)
It has been a few months since I tried to get an update on the 64-bit Intellipoint software for my "Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0". I just cannot live without that excellent magnifier-button, which is glassy-smooth in XP, even XP-x64. But it flashed terribly the last time I tried it in Vista x64. Even in Windows-7-build-7000 32-bit, using the beta-version of Intellipoint, it STILL goes white while I move the mouse, but then it's immediately clear when the mouse is stopped, which is acceptable. In fairness, I can see that to make a magnifier be glassy-smooth with all that compositing-stuff going on must be a nightmare but as an end-user I just have to have it work !
pg--az
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I just had a crappy experience at Best Buy. I choose to just buy a computer out of the box rather than mess with building one. I went to the store to see what was available for a new desktop and I could not find any 32-bit Vista machines by HP. I asked one of the sales people about it and he proceeded to let me know that I was silly for wanting 32-bit (he apparently has 2 64-bit systems at home) and that there are no compatibility issues to worry about and that they are awesome. Well I know for a fact that my employer will not allow 64-bit VPN software to be installed on a 64-bit system so that is a good reason not to go there. Will you please let me know what you think of the 2 systems and other than the obvious potential benefits over time is it work buying a 64-bit system now, today?
CleaKO
"Now, a man would have opened both gates, driven through and not bothered to close either gate." - Marc Clifton (The Lounge)