Getting ready for 64-bit Windows glory? Consider this...

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I was listening to This Week in Tech (TWiT) and the topic of 64-bit Vista came up. I thought that was a nice surprise since I'm waiting for a Merom processor to take advantage of 64-bit programs including Windows... even if it takes a few years. Unfortunately, Paul Thurrot, the Windows Supersite writer said that any home user installing Vista as their OS is crazy due to its limitations. While there are some security enhancements, in his opinion, the negatives, including mandatory use of signed drivers and compatibility with only some peripherals, far outweigh the positives. Thurrot has a more in depth article at his site. I definitely see his point... all of the sudden, all of this waiting seems for nothing. I can't imagine installing the 64-bit version of Vista now so I'm not sure what to think... any thoughts?

~ Brett

 

Driver compatibility is the biggest issue. Definitely make sure you can get drivers for all your hardware before upgrading. I'll have to wait for drivers for my HDTV tuner, which they're working on. Were it not for that one item I think I'd be all set. The performance improvement for certain bits of software (codecs, Java, encryption, etc) is dramatic when compiled for 64-bit, at least on AMD CPUs. There's a lot more than just breaking the 4GB RAM barrier, doubling of general registers being the most notable architectural improvement. AMD really straightened up the x86 architecture when they designed AMD64 with Microsoft.

 

Any "tech head" that makes vista their main OS before service pack one is only really a wannabe techie... Although it's cool and I personally love the visual enhancements and a lot of the other things (like being able to use the xbox 360 controllers on games and little nerdy things like that....... just the inability to use unsigned drivers - although the idea is great - there are at least two drivers that I know are on the W7 that I'm typing this from that are good and needed drivers for the system that are unsigned - know it for a fact.

Vista is a giant leap forward and this time next year we'll all wonder how we lived with out. However, it was only about 5 years ago that people were jumping at XP from Win98 - or if you were really unlucky, WinME... From either XP was a great upgrade, but a lot of programs didn't work right with XP - like Office XP for that matter... man, that never worked right and I couldn't imagine living without Office 2003...... It's built new from the ground up and although that's one of the most promising things, it should also be the scariest only because on release day they're beta testers will just mulitply to million of people and within the first six months I guarentee there will a few hundred mb's of updates at least.

I can't wait for it - but it's not going to be on machines we need to do business on for a year...... but it'll be on our new laptops and certainly personal machines to play around...

 

I'm not planning on going Vista x64 anytime soon since the double transition from XP to Vista and 32-bit to 64-bit complicates things too much. I'm not likely going to see much benefit going to 64-bit anyways and labtops don't have more than 4GB of memory either. I also have a multifunction printer that doesn't yet seem to have vista 64-bit drivers.

While Vista x64 may be a more difficult transition, Vista x86 shouldn't be too bad. Supposedly many 32-bit XP drivers can work under 32-bit Vista which streamlines the transition. Still hopefully Microsoft follows through on those Vista coupons that way we still have access to Vista just that we can choose when to actually use the coupon and install it. As long as they don't put some ridiculously short use before date.

 

I don't see much actual need to switch to vista for most people, all you really get is a better GUI, DX10, a new version of IE, and some assorted minor under the hood improvements. Most of the major stuff that was supposed to have been in Vista, like WinFS, has been delayed or cancelled.

Sure, the upgrade from any of the Win 9x kernel systems to XP was a major leap forward, but as of earlier this year Microsoft was STILL trying to boot major volume licensors off of Win2k and on to XP, because there really is no good reason to switch (other than the ending of support). The way I see it that's what Vista will be like, pre-service pack 1 at least, and that's without the potential that it will be drastically unstable or have major bugs that haven't been fixed in their rush to get the thing out the door.

 

Well put.... with out a doubt. The other reason some big companies won't move off Win2k is because the heads of IT don't want to learn anything new and don't want to deal with problems. These are the same people who push dell and hp on their companies because when something goes wrong with a system, instead of fixing it (which I can't beleive isn't in their job description), they have some guy who's subbed out by dell and hp to come in and take care of it....

.. There's certainly more than that going on, but it all just multiplies the issues.

 

Well, im not IT expert but I have been testing a setup with winXP64 Edition and the shear lack of driver support, drives me crazy. The only reason we are trailing xp64 is that we are doing large photoshop work and am quickly fiing 2gb RAM and windows pagefes the remaining RAM on the HDD slowing things down a lot (during my testing photoshop was using 1.8gb RAM and page filed over 6gb on the HDD) so I am hoping winxp64 it will allow us to utilize more than 2gb RAM.

on my current system runing windows XP installing 4gb RAM did not inprove performance it actually slowed it down, windows seemed to page file even more!

Anyway it is going to take a while before software developers to rewrite their software to take advantage of 64 bit windows. im not holding my breath, its going to take some time even after Vista gets released that you will see any advantage, so anyone I see trying to get vista up and running now, with the current level of support available.... I would not bother, at a minimum I would wait untill the official release, and personally im not upgrading untill the software is also up to speed and running 64bit.

 

Just so you know,

re: the unsigned drivers problem, you can disable that 'feature' by pressing F8 before booting windows and choosing the option to disable unsigned driver detection.

It should be quite easy to make that the default boot mode by editing the boot menu.

 

In Vista too or just 64-bit XP?

~ Brett

 

i havent had xp64 complain about unsigned drivers myself, but yes it works in vista, i am running the latest RC2

 

My problem runing xp64 is not about unsigned drivers, it was getting any stable 64bit drivers in the first place for printers if you are runing xp64ed you must have 64 bit drivers, 32 bit drivers do not work. Even my drivers for my wacom cintiq 21ux will all of a sudden stop workng, meaning I have to restart.

Are we talking about the same thing? I dont know about Vista but winxp64 needs 64bit drivers.

 

Yes, 64-bit Vista needs 64-bit drivers, from what I understand. That's gonna make peripheral shopping a whole lotta fun . I'll probably wait a year after Vista comes out and reinstall in 64-bit mode then since at least some more adoption should have taken place...

~ Brett

 

MS OS's . . . I'm still using win2k because it simply runs better than xp. Unfortunetly in the last 1-1.5 years some compatability problems have started. I'm getting an a8js and it comes with xp, so I'll stick with that. I probably won't switch to vista until it proves that it's a stable and worthwhile improvement over xp.

 

I guess the old saying of 'if it aint broke, dont fix it' applies.... well I'm sure some will point out all the 100's of updates in XP, but you get my idea.

Guess this could create a lot more jobs in the IT industry.... vista experts, and cost large corps mega $$$$$

its all about the $$ at the end of the day.

insane

 

Clearly it's not smart for someone who's trying to do work on the computer to upgrade to Vista until major issues have been fixed and important hardware & software is proven to work with it.

I estimate at least 1 year from now at the earliest.

 

fancy schmancy, use linux.

 

Meaning that Windows is not a good OS for doing serious work with? I don't think so, I'm able to do so just fine, thank you.

I do use linux, but only for small tasks, e.g. data recovery when it's the case. I don't know it well enough to switch fully, however, and some apps that I use at work have poor support in Linux.