Studio 1747 Touch Win7 x64 or x86?

Any opinions would be appreciated:

I've had my Studio 1747 Touch for a week now and am going to do an OS reinstall, again. I think I have a way to install the x86 version of win 7 on it - would there be any real downfalls to this over x64? I have a full-fledged desktop (RealSSD, Raid, Core i7 940 @4ghz w/12gig DDR3 1600) with Win7 x64 Ultimate. This laptop is a secondary computer (but will prob. stay on 24/7)and I'm basically looking for additional compatibility with older devices/software.

The laptop is pretty slick - the glossy multitouch works better than my previous touch screens, including my Latitude XT. It works well enough infact that I'm actually going to use the touch a lot - finger prints and smudges don't even seem bad. Speakers are good enough that I may sell my altec lansing XT1's. Specs are: ATI 4650, Backlit keyboard, BT 360, Dell1520 wifi, 720 Quad, 4gig ram, intel 32gb X25-e SLC SSD boot drive (FAST!), 640gb Scorpio Blue Data Drive. As powerful as this is, it runs a looong time on the 8 cell battery. I just wish it had the ati 5650, bluray, and a 1080p touch screen...

Oh, and incase anyone was wondering, the new WD 12.5mm 1tb drives will not fit into this case, even with modifications, as dell has the sata adapters upside down - too bad as I kinda wanted the space - but I ended up using the two WD drives in a thecus mininas.

 

I see no reason not to use 64-bit at this time. I have never had a compatibility issue and I have been using 64-bit for a few years at this point.

If you use 32-bit you will lose ~1gb of your 4gb of memory.

 

To your point on loss of ram: I'm already using half of my ram just surfing the web (appprox. 6 pages open) with just antivirus/windows operating (I just loaded a meter). I was wondering if anyone knows if Windows 7 x86 takes fewer resources to run - even though I'd be losing part of a gig of ram. Does a quadcore natively run better with a 64bit os?

 

If anything 64-bit will run more effciently, mainly because it can do more at once. Forget about that 32-bit can only use 3 Gigs of ran or 3.5 max. 64-bit has numerous other benefits principaly being more Virus resitant and with 64-bit code and featires it can do more thangs at once. Lets face it 32-bit has serious limitations mainly because even you have a fast CPU Core 2 Duo 6MB of cache and 4GB of DDR3 RAM that plenty, but the OS can not serve up enought data to it for it to crunch. Especially Core i7 or Core i5 which are HYper Threaded and the OS treats a 2 Core system like a 4 Core system.

 

Awesome, thanks for the input, that is pretty helpful - x64 it is. Ordering 8gb of ram today - might as well take advantage of it.