XP Pro 64 bit

How come not many (if any) notebooks that are 64 bit ready come with the option of having the 64 bit xp pro?

What are the advantages and upgrades of 64 bit pro? What are disadvantages?

Is it worth the upgrade? Can you download betas or what?

Thanks.

 

I have it installed on my pc not many advantages yet because most programs are desinged for 32-bit some won't even work on 64-bit.
the drivers of my gfx card don't work on win x64.
if i were you just leave the 32-bit on your laptop.

 

Hardware and software compatibility. A lot of devices simply don't support it. And with Microsoft devoting much of its time to Vista, I doubt there will be very much going on with XP x64.

 

I suspect Windows X64 was something Microsoft whipped out in their lunch break because they'd promised AMD to support their 64-bit processors.

At least, it's clear they haven't dedicated more than a minimum of resources to it.

To be fair though, it works fine, and all normal programs run fine. The main problem is with anything that run as a driver, because it has to be written specifically for 64-bit. That means antivirus programs, Daemontools and, obviously, hardware drivers. Most "internal" hardware has drivers (Not sure about notebook-specific stuff, though), but with external stuff like printers, digicams, scanners and so on, it can sometimes be tricky.

Another problem is with plugins, because a 64-bit app can only use 64-bit plugins. So while it comes with a 64-bit Internet Explorer, for example, no plugins work with it, so you can't view Flash or similar.

In those cases you can just run the 32-bit versions of the software though.

There aren't many actual advantages though. The best I can think of is that a few games can be patched to run in 64-bit mode, for slightly better performance, and sometimes, added features. (Far Cry has stuff like higher-res textures that's only enabled in 64-bit mode)