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32 bit or 64 bit for my laptop?
I have a Acer Aspire Timeline 3810T-6415. It has 4gb of ram and therefore came with Vista 64bit Home Premium.
My friend clean installed the Windows 7 RC 64bit right after I got my laptop, and it's amazing. At first he wanted to install 32bit, but because the free Windows 7 upgrade that comes with my laptop is 64bit, I didn't want to have to re-install everything when switching from 32bit to 64bit.
But now I'm planning on clean installing Windows 7 anyways. So now I don't know whether to get Windows 7 Professional 32bit or 64bit (my college has an alliance with MSDN so I can download either for free).
I've read a lot about the whole 32bit vs 64bit debate. The main thing people say for why to get 64bit is that RAM can be upgraded and that not all 4GB of RAM can be used. But I'm never going to upgrade the RAM in my laptop. Also, my laptop isn't built to do very intense tasks. On Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit RC, regardless of what I'm doing, my memory usage never goes above 1.5 GB, so I don't know if it matters that only 2.7-3.5 GB of my RAM can be used.
So my point is, can anyone tell me a reason why I should get 64bit? I heard programs may be 64bit only in the future but how soon/likely is that? I believe my laptop has only one stick of 4GB RAM. If i'm using 1.5GB of memory out of a total of 3ish GB, is it slower than if I'm using 1.5GB out of a total of 4GB?
If anyone could help, thanks!