seriously, with everyone going above 3 gigs for their memory this year (people WILL be moving from their vista machines in droves), will MS offer home/premium in a 64 bit version? I think it was a bad move to offer vista 64 only in the ultimate edition and it would be inexusable this time around to do the same, especially when many don't need/want the ultimate edition, or the 600 dollar price tag upon release. Is there info yet? or did I miss an announcement somewhere?
I know that they offered Home Premium in x64, because that's what I was running before a friend gave me Ultimate. I believe you had to call in after you bought Vista, and they would ship you the x64 version for a small shipping fee. To answer your question: I believe they will offer Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate in x64, but probably not the others.
OH DEAR --PLEASE GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT. THERE IS A 32 BIT VERSION OF VISTA ULTIMATE - in fact the retail edition came with BOTH versions on the DVD (even the Upgrade version). For VISTA HOME PREMIUM you could always get a 64 Bit edition - you just had to send off (Via the Internet) for the DVD -- the Key was the same as your 32 bit edition. You just had to pay around 3 - 5 EUR for the media. (This applied to Retail versions -- not Pre-installed OEM versions). In the present climate BTW when buying a Computer with a pre-installed version of Vista always ask the store manager to throw in a retail copy of Home Premium. They will often oblge to make a Sale. Here's a screenshot from a Laptop where I'm running Vista Ultimate X-32. Cheers jimbo
You are right on the money here regarding the fact that Vista Ultimate (upgrade or full retail) came with both versions... And yes, you could obtain a copy of the 64 bit version simply by ordering one online from the site MS gives you on a little card in the packaging of all Vista's below Ultimate.. And your right the key for the 32 bit version worked for the 64 bit media as well... On a side note though, it's incorrect to label a 32 bit edition of something as X-32... It's x86 and x64.. I'm not trying to be a d!ck.. I just wanted to point that out as you asked the op to make sure he had his facts right... I apologize if this offends you in any way, that is not my intention....
