Which one: Windows® 7 Home Premium 32 bit or 64 bit ?

I'm looking for a laptop suitable for university Comp Sci. student doing programming langs. like JAva, c/c++, web development, etc. On top of that some graphics work like CAD, video, image editing.
With the normal use surf internet, chatting, Microsoft office, entertainment, etc

I have found two laptops which suit the above :

1) Dell Studio 15 Laptop
http://configure.ap.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=in&cs=indhs1&fb=1&l=en&oc=S541008IN8&s=dhs

2) Lenovo G550 - 2958H2Q
http://shopap.lenovo.com/SEUILibrar...-category-id=B3FB18334B10478D9A7E021A24DEDB87

From the above sites, I see that only difference between the two is that:
1) Dell comes with Win. 7 Home Premium 64 bit & dedicated graphics card:- 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570. And more offers than Lenovo might have (thus the higher price on dell !)

2) Lenovo comes with Win. 7 Home Premium 32 bit & dedicated graphics card: - NVIDIA GeForce G 210M 512MB

My questions:
A) Both Graphics card have same performance, right?
B) Is 64 bit laptop incompatible with most: old & latest programming langs. IDE, application, driver softwares??
If so, can I downgrade the dell above into Win. 7 Home Premium 32 bit & how?
I have read that 64bit will compile codes slower than in 32bit....and old 16bit programmes will not run on 64bit? As a novice programmer i think you have to work with 16bits aswell, right?

 

A. The 4570 is a bit better.

B. Almost all things work on 64bit that do on 32bit. Although, yes older drivers and things sometimes, but rarely wont work .
The advantage of 64bit is being able to use 4GB of RAM. Both laptops you have there only have 3GB in them, so 32bit will be perfectly fine

As for 16bit apps, at that level, i would start to doubt 64bit working well for them... but this is an assumption.

 

A. alright

B. For me 3gb is perfect. how can i downgrade win7. home pre. 64bit to 32 bit?? Dell is only going to install the win7 home pre. 64bit. Do they give the windows cd with the laptop?
If so, can i downgrade to same version 32 bit with that cd??

C. Why is lenovo giving Win7 32bit? Lenovo seems to be much cheaper so what's the best choice dell or lenovo?

 

The Dell's disk will also be 64bit...
...you can downgrade it, but not with that CD.

im not sure, they will usually do it to make you pay extra for a 64bit version, which are usually more expensive.

The Dell has overall better specs, so i'd go for that. But you cant go wrong with either one.

 

If you have 4GB system memory and dual core cpu with 64bit support, I'd say go for 64bit.

 

64Bit will not run 16Bit applications - unless you have some obscure old software you should be fine with 64Bit - you might find the thread in my signature useful.