Upgrade to Vista 64 bit - good idea or not?

Hi all,

Newbie here ... I bought the DV6307CA recently, and went through my share of problems (like laptop not waking up from 'sleep' after closing the lid and requires hard reset, webcam problems etc etc) ... I'm sure many of you have experienced as well.

Anyways, now most of my problem are fixed, except for the webcam problem, which comes and goes.

I was surprised while trouble-shooting through these problems that my laptop, despite having a 64bit processor (AMD Turion64x2), is installed with the 32-bit version of Vista.

I contacted HP, and they sent me the 64bit Vista installation CD. They did, however, warned me for possible problems with ugprade to 64bit Vista, saying MS is not up to speed with driver support and some people who ugpraded have experienced a lot of compatbility issues.

What's you guys' opinion on this? Anybody's gone through this? Good / bad experience with the upgrade to 64bit Vista?


Thanks,

 

Driver support is pathetic for x64 right now. All my stuff worked for 32bit, but half didn't work for x64. I'd lock that x64 disc away for about a year.

 

That's normal...the 32-bit edition is more compatible with hardware and techs need more training to handle 64-bit issues. HP and all the others want to avoid 64-bit hassles.

That surprises me since HP support told me the OEM Vista license does not include the 64-bit edition and I would have to contact Microsoft to obtain an Anytime Upgrade disc to install a 64-bit edition (Microsoft support seems to disagree stating that 32 and 64 bit editions are both covered under the same license, even with OEM versions and they will ship a 64-bit disc to me).

I've installed the 64-bit edition and it works fine, except that several system devices did not have drivers included and updates are not available from Microsoft for them yet. The only devices not supported by Microsoft for my HP dv6265 are:

Ricoh MMC card reader
Ricoh Memory stick reader
Ricoh xD reader
HP Quick Launch buttons device

But I don't really need them since I don't use those memory cards (my SD cards work fine), and I don't use the quick launch feature. HP has drivers available in both 32 and 64-bit now and some recently updated, but I haven't bothered to install them.

All of my software works just the same in the 64-bit edition with no compatibility issues.

Oddly enough, there is no 64-bit flash player released from Adobe yet for the 64-bit web browser so if you want flash to work, you need to use the 32-bit browser which is used by default anyway.

And lastly, the vast majority of programs included with Vista are simply 32-bit versions anyway (many unchanged from XP!), so you don't gain much by running the 64-bit Vista editions unless you have a specific program that runs faster or with more memory access in the 64-bit edition, and since laptops tend to be limited in memory there isn't much gained there either.

Perhaps in a few years when more programs are available in true 64-bit code, it might be worthwhile to run a 64-bit edition of Vista. For now, there isn't much benefit other than bragging rights.


I'm running the 64-bit edition, but I don't really need it...

 

Get the Richoh drivers off the dv9000t support drivers. I have Vista 64-bit since last 6 months, running smoothly as ever no problems.
I can even install 32-bit apps on it and it automatically detects those apps and installs them on a separate program files x86 folder.

 

Thanks for all the advices. I think I'll go ahead and try to install the 64bit version over the wkend ... and while at it, I'll try to do a 'clean install' without the HP junks.

Whatever it was that I said, they did send the disc to me ... no complaint there.

True ... that said, since I want to do a fresh install to rid the HP craps, might as well upgrade to 64bit at the same time, as long as there are no major problems with drivers / compatibility.

 

Well if you do install Vx64 you can always run softwares on compatibility mode. I have a couple of programs that doesn't support x64 yet and will wait it out.

 

You can always run 32bit from a Virtual Machine (Google Microsoft VirtualPC 2007). Eventually, I might be doing that to run XP and Ubuntu at once.

 

64-bit is required for 4GB RAM configurations, otherwise you're limited to accessing only 3.5GB. Vista can make use of the extra RAM so at today's RAM prices it's a bit tempting.

I'm inclined to install 64-bit just so that if I come across a program that truly takes advantage of AMD64 mode, I'll be ready. Java is supposed to really like AMD64 mode (doubles the number of general registers, x86-32 being a register-starved architecture). For now I mostly run 32-bit WinXP.