Q.1 64 or 32 bit?
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HJ
Cycling in Scotland
- Location
- Auld Reekie
Go for 64bit, it is finally the coming thing, why we mostly still using 32bit OS's is beyond me...
rh100
Well-Known Member
Take a look here
It seems you need fully compatible drivers. Although the PC has a 64bit cpu - you need to check driver availability for all the devices you use - video, sound, printer, scanner etc etc.
As Garz said - it's benefit is in the memory it can address - so you can have more programs open.
Staying 32bit might be better for backward compatibility.
Havn't made my mind up which I'm going with yet - I have a trial version so have a few months to decide.
It seems you need fully compatible drivers. Although the PC has a 64bit cpu - you need to check driver availability for all the devices you use - video, sound, printer, scanner etc etc.
As Garz said - it's benefit is in the memory it can address - so you can have more programs open.
Staying 32bit might be better for backward compatibility.
Havn't made my mind up which I'm going with yet - I have a trial version so have a few months to decide.
ian turner
Guru
- Location
- Leicestershire
64 bit will give you better performance as 64 bit processors run 32 bit software in an emulation mode so don't take full advantage of the processor.
Unfortunately some software vendors will continue to produce 32 bit software for a while yet and the vast majority of computers still have 32 bit OS thus not encouraging them to change so god knows when we'll move away from 32 bit.
Unfortunately some software vendors will continue to produce 32 bit software for a while yet and the vast majority of computers still have 32 bit OS thus not encouraging them to change so god knows when we'll move away from 32 bit.
rh100
Well-Known Member
ian turner said:
Thats right, until there is a big shift by everyone, 32 bit will continue. Advantages of 32 over 16 bit was fairly clear I suppose. The thing is, the current 'standard' hardware and software is perceived by many as being more than adequate, which it is if all your staff are doing is word, excel etc and email and web surfing. Plus the fact that the big increase in use of PC's seems to have happened whilst XP was the main thing, so why would Joe Blogg's wish to upgrade and take the chance nothing will quite work the same as it used to. He just wants the same except quicker and smoother. Because there are so many XP users, compared to say when 3.11 was migrated to win95, it's going to be a long time yet before 32bit xp dies off - the market is way too big.
beanzontoast
Guru
- Location
- South of The Peaks
rh100 said:
I agree. People have go so used to Xp and its nuances that they know their way around them. Though I'm trying out Win 7, I'm of the opinion that an OS should be 'invisible'. Most people, if they thought about it, wouldn't buy a computer just to marvel at the OS - they would buy them for whether the software titles they want to run on them will work well. An unobtrusive OS is the best OS of all.
ian turner
Guru
- Location
- Leicestershire
That would be a change from the current system with which people are familiar with and OS will continue to conform to the existing standard with minor tweaks for quite a while.
If you step back and look at the OS proclaimed as better than the rest by their various supporters you will find that they can't see the wood for the trees and that they all follow the same basic model.
The mouse will see its 40th birthday next year for instance. The windowed OS will be 30 years old
If you step back and look at the OS proclaimed as better than the rest by their various supporters you will find that they can't see the wood for the trees and that they all follow the same basic model.
The mouse will see its 40th birthday next year for instance. The windowed OS will be 30 years old
rh100
Well-Known Member
ian turner said:That would be a change from the current system with which people are familiar with and OS will continue to conform to the existing standard with minor tweaks for quite a while.
If you step back and look at the OS proclaimed as better than the rest by their various supporters you will find that they can't see the wood for the trees and that they all follow the same basic model.
The mouse will see its 40th birthday next year for instance. The windowed OS will be 30 years old
I guess that's a good indicator, if the mouse and windowed environments are that old, and I was still using DOS for most things until after the advent of W95. It shows how long the old stuff lingers. Shouldn't we all be having conversations with our PC's by now
HJ
Cycling in Scotland
- Location
- Auld Reekie
ian turner said:
The irony is that the vast majority of computers have have 64 bit processors and have had for the last ten years...
beanzontoast
Guru
- Location
- South of The Peaks
rh100 said:Shouldn't we all be having conversations with our PC's by now
Not a big Trek fan, but I recall the bit in one of the movies where they travel back in time to the 1980's. Scotty picks up a computer mouse and says "Hello, computer?" into it. I have a feeling any kind of spontaneous verbal interaction with a pc (beyond transcription) will be a while coming.
Yes im stupid enough to have jumped too quick into the vista bandwagon, like with xp and 98 I usually wait about 6months-1year before the bugs have ironed out and the guinea pigs vouch for it before buying.
At least the licence fees have become sensible, at £30-50 for win7 its a good price as I can use vista on a data centre machine and save 7 for laptops/desktop that require the nippier environment.
At least the licence fees have become sensible, at £30-50 for win7 its a good price as I can use vista on a data centre machine and save 7 for laptops/desktop that require the nippier environment.
2Loose
Guru
- Location
- Loughborough, Leicestershire.
I'm playing with 7 at the moment, advantages over Vista seem to be....
1. UAC doesn't take 10 seconds to dim the screen anymore so is far less annoying (I turned it off on Vista anyway)
2. Task bar is a quite nice improvevment imho.
3. Being able to snap a window into the edges easiliy so you can see two windows on screen at once more easily.
ooh, Media Centre is a lot better too.
Anyone got any more, I've only had it 3 days so far?
Apart from these, I am wondering why I bothered tbh. None of them is a reason to purchase in my mind, but if you are elligible for the 30quid deal, then why not I guess. If I had gone from XP on the other hand it would have made more sense to me.
rh100
Well-Known Member
2Loose said:
I've got Vista on the media pc, what have you noticed about W7 that is better as far as the media interface goes? I had a quick look through the media center interface on the laptop install - looks the same on the surface but interested if you think it's worth an upgrade on the media part alone.
As for other benefits I've seen - I've got it on a couple of laptops (the RC version) - on the newer one the Aero interface looks even better but is still based on Vista's aero interface, but the screen previews are a bit more slick. The main thing seems to be performance and drivers. I've loaded it onto an old 6 year old Celeron laptop, and apart from no aero interface and problems with wifi drivers, no 3rd party drivers were needed and it just loaded and worked out of the box and seems to run quite smoothly. I wouldn't have dreamed of trying Vista on that machine.
They have also made the UAC a bit easier to adjust for the end user with it's own interface instead of registry hacks - a big bugbear from Vista - although I think it was a good feature to have.
I like the start menu - if you look at the recently used items that show up - hover over the arrow to the right - and the right part of the start menu changes to show the related documents to that app - like a submenu - very useful.
edit:
I think you may be right though - maybe not enough to warrant an upgrade from Vista to W7. But XP is starting to look a bit dated - still runs well but just starting to look a little basic compared to it's newer versions. Does the release version still have the version of 6.1 in winver?
