Windows 7 32-bit vs. 64-bit Comparison

[Mike]

Hi

I had only one problem with my W7 64 bit installation.
There were no drivers for my expensive Epson scanner.
Now it's been a year and a half and there still aren't.
I was able to get third party software to run it, so that just shows that Epson doesn't give a rats behind about their customers.

The only other issue was that Adobe Indesign CS2 would not work in a 64 bit environment.
I had to upgrade to a the new version.

I had no choice but to go with 64 bit because my computer has 8 gigabytes of ram.
So if I wanted to take advantage of it I had to go the 64 bit route.

64 bit will replace 32 as 32 replaced 16 so you might as well go with the flow. I now see posts saying that Windows 8 will have 128 bit.
All my games and other software work fine even old Tomb Raider games from the 90s that I originally ran on Windows 95.

Mike

Agreed. It is interesting to look back at some of the old posts here and see how this situation has evolved. 64-bit is now pretty much the standard in retail stores. Most computer systems are now shipping with at least 4GB of RAM, and the only problem is with old peripherals. In those instances, especially if the model is discontinued, the company that made the device will not want to spend any further money on driver development. Canon is renowned for their driver support and when used in a production setting with professional Kodak scanners produce incredible images. Of course, this is always subject to change. As for Windows 8 going 128-bit? This sounds a bit extreme to me, but I suppose it could always be possible.

As more computer users migrate to newer equipment, the problems encountered with 64-bit drivers, and the lack thereof, seem to be going away. Even though most applications are still built in 32-bit, there are ones now designed for both. WinRAR from Rarlabs does show a marked improvement in the 64-bit version on higher end processors.

Here is a good indication of how the demand for high-end databases servers probably played a large role in the adoption of 64-bit computing:

"Today, 64-bit processors have become the standard for systems ranging from the most scalable servers to desktop PCs. The way to take full advantage of these systems is with 64-bit editions of Microsoft Windows products. 64-bit systems offer direct access to more virtual and physical memory than 32-bit systems and process more data per clock cycle, enabling more scalable, higher performing computing solutions. There are two 64-bit Windows Server platforms: x64-based and Itanium-based. x64 solutions are the direct descendants of x86 32-bit products, and are the natural choice for most server application deployments—small or large. Itanium-based systems offer alternative system designs and a processor architecture best suited to extremely large database and custom application solutions."

Microsoft 64-Bit Computing

The only thing I have noticed is that RAM prices seem to have gone through the roof. This is a major disappointment, as custom-built systems used to be easy to build with a lot of RAM, including a time, about a year ago, when even high-end DDR3 memory had gone relatively cheap.