Anyone gone back to 32bit after trying 64bit?

[brother]

Hi,
I was running Windows 7 premium 32bit. My 500gb Western Digital hard drive was very noisey and getting on my nerves. I have an external Hitachi 500gb hard drive, so I decided to swap them around. I backed up everthing on my external drive then cloned my C drive onto it using Acronis 2010. Everything worked fine.
Then I had the idea of trying the 64bit version on my noisey drive, and if everthing works, I will then clone it again onto my quiet drive. I've had to get a few drivers from the net and a couple of my software programs didn't run, but I might stick with it.
I have 3Gb of RAM, I might just make it up to 4Gb now!

 

[win7clutz]

Haven't personally seen anyone have to revert back to 32... Yet from what I've seen loading both on my clients machines/networks tells me that the performance difference is negligible if any at all...

 

[Crispy]

You wont need to get a extra 1gb RAM 3gb will be enough 32bit is dead now Windows 8 will not support 32bit anymore.

 

[Tews]

You wont need to get a extra 1gb RAM 3gb will be enough 32bit is dead now Windows 8 will not support 32bit anymore.

Please cite your sources for both of these statements... particularly the last one...

 

[Tork64]

even if i had 2gb, id still get the 64bit os

 

[pparks1]

If I were to put Windows 7 on my work laptop....I would go with 32-bit rather than the 64-bit. Even though I have 4GB of RAM...our corporate CheckPoint VPN doesn't support 64-bit...and dealing with a VM to run the VPN and then not having my actual applications and data available to me from my host machine really isn't productive.

64-bit really isn't the "be all end all".

Haven't personally seen anyone have to revert back to 32... Yet from what I've seen loading both on my clients machines/networks tells me that the performance difference is negligible if any at all...

Unless you are using true 64-bit applications and are number crunching or doing some type of heavy media encoding...you are right...there isn't much difference at all. If any.

Windows 8 will not support 32bit anymore.

Is this been stated somewhere, or just speculation?

even if i had 2gb, id still get the 64bit os

Any particular reason?

Unless you are using true 64-bit apps and have something very CPU intensive...there really isn't much benefit. And if you did have something that was quite CPU intensive...I would expect you would have more than 2GB of RAM.

 

[patrickt]

If someone were to have a critical application that didn't run under 64-bit, that would be a reason to roll back to 32-bit. Or, if someone had a beloved piece of hardware that doesn't work with 64-bit, again it would make sense to roll back.

I can't think of any other reasons for preferring 32-bit over 64-bit.

It would make no sense, to me, to buy a new computer just to run 64-bit. I added some memory but memory is cheap. I also bought a new program for one task but it was $50 and I, purely by luck, like the new one better than the old one.

It's my impression that the move to 64-bit has passed a critical point. I needed 64-bit codecs for my raw files and my camera manufacturer hasn't made them. But, an individual did write the codecs and they're on the net for free. I see that as significant.

 

[satchmo]

I have 8GB of memory installed.

It wouldn't make any sense to use a 32-bit OS.

 

[dave1812]

I have 8GB of memory installed.

It wouldn't make any sense to use a 32-bit OS.

Conversely, it makes no sense for me to install 64-bit OS's that don't support the drivers I need for proprietary devices I use with PC's. I fully expect that those devices will NEVER have 64-bit drivers written for them. AAMOF, one vendor explicitly has told it's customer base that there will never be 64-bit drivers for their devices.

 

[Sekko Da Vinci]

What is the difference between an 32bit and 64bit OS...?? they all use a lot of resources to run, and all the graphics are the same... are they ?

 

[DeaconFrost]

one vendor explicitly has told it's customer base that there will never be 64-bit drivers for their devices.

That's when you tell the vendor that you will no longer be a customer of theirs. It is inexcusable for any vendor, here in 2009, to be saying this.

What is the difference between an 32bit and 64bit OS...?? they all use a lot of resources to run, and all the graphics are the same... are they ?

I can't believe this is still asked (again, it's 2009). Anyway, the biggest difference is the amount of memory supported. If you have 4 GB, and want to use 4 GB, or more, you need an x64 OS. As more and more apps become x64, or ship with x64 executables, like Office 2010, the performance differences will grow. As for graphics...I'm not sure what you mean. Do they look any different? No. Will the performance be different? it can, especially as games become more intensive. That's not necessarily due to the game itself, but the fact the system can address and use more memory.

 

[Crispy]

You wont need to get a extra 1gb RAM 3gb will be enough 32bit is dead now Windows 8 will not support 32bit anymore.

Please cite your sources for both of these statements... particularly the last one...

Go look at Windows 8 Forums You will find all your info there.

 

[satchmo]

I can't believe this is still asked (again, it's 2009)

Pretty soon, it will be 2010.

 

[dave1812]

one vendor explicitly has told it's customer base that there will never be 64-bit drivers for their devices.

That's when you tell the vendor that you will no longer be a customer of theirs. It is inexcusable for any vendor, here in 2009, to be saying this.

What is the difference between an 32bit and 64bit OS...?? they all use a lot of resources to run, and all the graphics are the same... are they ?

I can't believe this is still asked (again, it's 2009). Anyway, the biggest difference is the amount of memory supported. If you have 4 GB, and want to use 4 GB, or more, you need an x64 OS. As more and more apps become x64, or ship with x64 executables, like Office 2010, the performance differences will grow. As for graphics...I'm not sure what you mean. Do they look any different? No. Will the performance be different? it can, especially as games become more intensive. That's not necessarily due to the game itself, but the fact the system can address and use more memory.

You are clueless--I have a lifesaving medical device that I can't just give up because they don't make 64bit drivers for the software.

 

[sygnus21]

Go look at Windows 8 Forums You will find all your info there.

Where's the actual link in that forum that states 32-bit will not be supported?

Thank you.

 

[drironside]

You wont need to get a extra 1gb RAM 3gb will be enough 32bit is dead now Windows 8 will not support 32bit anymore.

Well that's what they are saying now. But Windows 7 was originally not going to support 32 bit either. Think it will depend on how the economy here in the US improves by then (it's going to be a long bumpy road I'm afraid). Microsoft will want the largest market available for sales.

 

[sygnus21]

one vendor explicitly has told it's customer base that there will never be 64-bit drivers for their devices.

That's when you tell the vendor that you will no longer be a customer of theirs. It is inexcusable for any vendor, here in 2009, to be saying this.

This is sort of like predicting the future... Are you sure your vendor will be supportive when new technology arrives in the future?

They should, but we all know this isn't the case. How long has Windows 64-bit been around? But yet we still have no 64-bit supported Adobe Flash Player. Hmmm....

Additionally it's not as simple as just shelling out money for upgrades. We all can't assume everyone has extra money laying around for upgrades, especially when those upgrades can be extremely costly, or dare I say, not available.

However I do agree it's ridiculous for a vendor to say they won't support 64-bit. They might as well tell their customers to get lost.

Just providing a different perspective

 

[dave1812]

one vendor explicitly has told it's customer base that there will never be 64-bit drivers for their devices.

That's when you tell the vendor that you will no longer be a customer of theirs. It is inexcusable for any vendor, here in 2009, to be saying this.

This is sort of like predicting the future... Are you sure your vendor will be supportive when new technology arrives in the future?

They should, but we all know this isn't the case. How long has Windows 64-bit been around? But yet we still have no 64-bit supported Adobe Flash Player. Hmmm....

Additionally it's not as simple as just shelling out money for upgrades. We all can't assume everyone has extra money laying around for upgrades, especially when those upgrades can be extremely costly, or dare I say, not available.

However I do agree it's ridiculous for a vendor to say they won't support 64-bit. They might as well tell their customers to get lost.

Just providing a different perspective

I don't know what your expectations are, but I'm willing to bet you just might be unaware of just how many specialty applications there are out there that don't have 64 bit drivers written for them. It's hardly a rare issue.

 

[harpua]

It's true that 64 bit support is still somewhat of an issue, but it's gotten a lot better lately. All my mission critical stuff runs fine on my x64 system even if it is 32 bit. We now finally even have an IP blocker (PeerBlock) that works flawlessly (w/o tweaking) on x64 platforms.

That said, however, I did just yesterday encounter one of those little compatibility issues after I installed the 64 bit version of Office 2010. The 32 bit desktop calendar I use (Rainlendar Pro) no longer will sync with Outlooks calendar. Fortunately for me, that's not a deal breaker, (or even if it was I could always go back to the 32 bit version of Office 2010 which runs fine on a system with an x64 OS). So for me, that's the nature of the problems with x64 these days. It's mostly just really minor little issues (like the one with Rainlendar Pro) that occasionally still are encountered.

 

[dave1812]

It's true that 64 bit support is still somewhat of an issue, but it's gotten a lot better lately. All my mission critical stuff runs fine on my x64 system even if it is 32 bit. That said, I did just encounter a little compatibility issue after I installed the 64 bit version of Office 2010. The 32 bit desktop calendar I use (Rainlendar Pro) no longer will sync with Outlooks calendar. Fortunately for me, that's not a deal breaker, (or even if it was I could always go back to the 32 bit version of Office 2010 which runs fine on a system with an x64 OS). So for me, that's the nature of the problems with x64 these days. It's mostly just really minor little issues (like the one with Rainlendar Pro) that occasionally still are encountered.

what did u think of Office 2010? I was appalled at how long it took to install (roughly 15 minutes). Then, I went about using it...or should I say TRIED to use it. I couldn't find how to bring up the ruler in Word, despite searching through the help(less) system. I finally gave up. I find Excel and Word 2010 not worth the upgrade cost/learning curve because for me, 2003 is the cat's meow. It installed in just a few minutes, opens each app in under 1.5 seconds and has all the features I need, and most importantly, I'm very familiar with both apps. AAMOF I used to teach Excel. I think MS peaked with 2003. As long as I don't lose the installation disk or the product key, I'll just keep moving my 3 installations to the latest PC's I'm running. IF 2010 were FREE, I'd reject it for nothing more than the fact that 2003 does what I want it to do and then some. Anyway, that's this man's opinion of the latest Office effort.