64-bit processor (and perhaps 64-bit operating system)

[Really Weird Person]

This is actually a poll. If you run Windows Vista, include the edition (Basic, Business, Ultimate...) as well.

[Sam_Zen]

I still run W2K and fine by me.

[LPChip]

I run both Windows XP Professional x64 SP1 and Windows XP Proffessional x86 SP2.

I voted for XP Pro x64.

I do want to add however, that I will not use my XP Pro x64 installation much, and when I am going to reformat, I will remove XP pro x64 entirelly and stop using it. The reason for this is that the x64 version is more limited and less in performance for most situations. XP Pro x86 is just so commonly used that the best support is there.

[Really Weird Person]

I currently have a tri boot right now.
1. Windows Vista (Release Candidate 2)
2. Windows XP (x86)
3. Windows 98 (Virtual PC)

[Saga Musix]

My main system is 32bit Windows XP pro, there's also a SuSE distribution installed which i don't use very much.

[Sam_Zen]

I forgot to mention running the generic version on an old laptop with W98.

[Really Weird Person]

What is SuSE? I do not believe that I recognize that. Maybe if I saw what it stands for, I may recognize it. Maybe not too. It is Linux and I have not really used that (that I can recall anyway).

[Sam_Zen]

SuSE is just one of the first operating system made for linux.

[Saga Musix]

yap, it's a linux os. i also have win98 on my older machines...

[LPChip]

I guess the outcome of the poll is clear: Don't use an x64 version

Even though I have an x64 version running, I have ordered a valid XP pro x86 version, which is the last thing I still have illegally

[Really Weird Person]

I do not know if that is necessarily true, LPChip. I would not think that the outcome of the poll (77% 32-bit or lower and 22% 64-bit) necessarily mean that the 64-bit environment should be totally avoided, but that not nearly as many people [on this forum] use the 64-bit environment as the 32-bit (or lower) environment. Has anyone found any benefits to the 64-bit environment? Is it any more stable than the 32-bit environment? The main thing that I keep wondering about is the calculator and whether it can handle numbers up to 64 digits. That seems logical since the 32-bit calculator handles 32 digits (one for each bit).

[LPChip]

I do not know if that is necessarily true, LPChip. I would not think that the outcome of the poll (77% 32-bit or lower and 22% 64-bit) necessarily mean that the 64-bit environment should be totally avoided, but that not nearly as many people [on this forum] use the 64-bit environment as the 32-bit (or lower) environment. Has anyone found any benefits to the 64-bit environment? Is it any more stable than the 32-bit environment? The main thing that I keep wondering about is the calculator and whether it can handle numbers up to 64 digits. That seems logical since the 32-bit calculator handles 32 digits (one for each bit).

You can interpret this in several ways. 1. People are not using it because its too new (which isn't really the case) 2. People are not using it because it costs money to upgrade, not only to that OS which basically is the same as XP pro x86 which everyone has) but also to their CPU. or 3. People do not upgrade because the benefit isn't that big.

I have done some serious testing between 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. This because I have a very powerfull 64-bits processor and then also like to explore this solution. True, the 64-bits OS does run very smooth, but then again, so does the 32 bit one.

In fact, the comparisment between the x86 and x64 OS's performance are basically the same. the x64 is slightly slower, but since my processor is very powerfull, its not really noticable.

The gain would be in programs that do big calculations. So I was looking at my software list and basically, I don't have programs that would benefit from having x64.

MS Excel would be the only program that works with numbers, but even in this program, I don't really need large numbers. Other programs are CAD Drawing programs and 3D programs. I don't use any of them.

Conclusion to me: aside from the hastle that it creates seperate program files for x64 and x86 applications, there's no real difference for me. Oh, and I found a few little compatibility issues with unsupported drivers.

XP pro x86 it is for me

[Really Weird Person]

There is one thing that my dad and I tried to do with Excel, but it did not work too well. We were thinking that it is because the 32-bit processor/operating system cannot handle it. We took some numbers and attempted them to multiply times the row number. For example, we had a 1 in column A and a 2 in column B. We were trying to make the spreadsheet expound on those calculations. For example, B3 would be 4, B4 would be 6... We even tried the first 256 columns (A - IV) and the first 65,536 rows (self-explanitory), but I believe that was still too large. We initially tried a whole sheet (with the largest ordered pair being (16,384,1,048,576) (XFD1,048,576)), but that had my computer frozen for a day or two!

[LPChip]

it shouldn't be that much of a problem to do it though, but it is adviced to know that if you make this, be sure to turn of the calculations of excel, or it will try to do the calculation during the make of each cell which makes it go crazy.

Crashing? nah... It will calculate and until thats finished, you just can't use the system, so it seems frozen, but its actually busy.