Upgrade To 64 Bit Windows?

[crokett]

I put Windows 7 on my laptop last week, except I put 32 bit on instead of 64 bit. My laptop is a 64 bit laptop. Is it worth rebuilding into 64 bit? I don't think there is an upgrade path from 32 to 64 bit versions. My laptop only has 2 GB of RAM and I don't expect it to get more. I also don't use any 64 bit applications. Are the performance advantages going to be significant enough to bother with reinstalling?

[vaking]

Main advantage of 64 is being able to handle large amounts of memory. If you plan to stay with 2 Gig - don't bother with upgrade. If you use photoshop with multigigabyte files and 30 Gigs of memory - then 64 flies compared to 32.

[jkristia]

Vaking, just curious, have you experienced any mouse problems on Vista x64 when loading an app that takes 3-4Gb?. We have an issue with the app we have developed when running it on Vista x64 and loading a large file, then sometimes suddenly the mouse stops working on that one app (actually it moves off the screen, e.g. tool tips are shown in upper left corner and xy coordinates are completely off). This does not happen on XP x64, only Vista x64. Maybe you have experienced similar issues if you have loaded GB of files into PhotoShop ?

[Kristofor]

I'm not Vaking, but I haven't seen that behavior in Vista64. I don't use Photoshop with any frequency on my 2 main machines, but I have been able to work with multi-GB video and trace files without any issues.

Even if you only have 2GB of physical RAM you can sometimes see a benefit from running in 64bit mode as the virtual address space expands as well. I've only run into one game where this was an issue, but I would have simply stopped playing if I needed to regularly use a 2GB machine...

With how cheap RAM is today, in a business environment upgrading (to 4GB at any rate, maybe more if you're able to use it and don't have to buy pricey/odd high-density modules) is more cost effective than spending the time trying to monitor or justify the expense.

[crokett]

I was curious so looked up the price of an additional 2GB of RAM For this machine. 30 bucks!!??? Wow hardware prices have really fallen. I may get back into building PCs again if things are that cheap.

[jgrobler]

It's so cheap, I, for the first time in 14 years, bought a PC, instead of building one.
To be on topic, I have Vista 64bit on this PC, with 6Gb memory, but I haven't really stress tested it, and did not encounter any issues with Vista yet.
Off topic again - I thought you were now a die-hard Ubuntu convert?

[Alex Franke]

I just picked up a little laptop, too. It came with Vista pre-installed. Also 2GB.

I was actually thinking about putting ubuntu on it to see if it boosted the performance at all.

I know that none of this answers any of your questions, but at least it gets me one step closer to 2k.

[crokett]

Off topic again - I thought you were now a die-hard Ubuntu convert?

For a while I was. I still have it on a desktop at home and I still use it. At work I ran into the the 'one thing' - and there is always one that I need Windows for. In this case it was some software to let me teach classes remotely. I could log into the website and host meetings, but the app that let me share applications running on my laptop didn't work under Ubuntu. It did work on the XP VM I had running inside Ubuntu but that meant having to more or less duplicate my Ubuntu install on Windows. So I opted just to roll back to Windows. If I were in a different job I'd still be using it.

[vaking]

I don't really use photoshop - I mentioned it simply because it is the classical example of a memory-hungry beast. I use Vista 64 on my home PC with applications like Visio and files sometimes get significant in size. I have never experienced mouse problems.
My system has 8 Gigabytes of RAM. There are some applications I use that only run on a 32 bit system, so on this Vista 64 computer I also run VMware (server version because its is free) and a 32 bit of Windows 7. Even with all this complexity system is very stable.

[Scottydont]

I am in IT and I was an early adopter with Vista 64 bit. Driver support sucked and still does IMHO. I have several peripherals (network VOIP, Web Cams, TV Cards, CF adapters, that will not work with Vista 64 bit and some of them were sold as "Vista compatible". Unless you are a power user that has requirements for 64 bit, personally I would not touch 64 bit with a 10 foot pole.

Yes the 64 bit architechture has more capabilities but it creates too much conflict for the everyday user.