iTunes alternatives for Vista 64-bit?

Apparently iTunes will not work with an iPod touch and Vista 64-bit, which becomes a problem if I get a laptop with 4GB of RAM. Are there any alternative programs that will work with an iPod touch and Vista 64-bit?

Also, can anyone go over the RAM thing? From what little research I've done, it seems like you need Vista 64-bit to use 4GB of RAM, but some manufacturers are offering 4GB but not Vista 64-bit (like Alienware?)?

 

I hear there are work around to the Itunes 64 bit compatability.

http://coderjournal.com/2007/02/setting-up-itunes-on-windows-vista-64-bit/

The RAM thing is that 32 bit operating systems don't have enough virtual memory addresses to address every area of 4 gigs of RAM. A 32 bit operating system will only be able to address about 3.2-3.7 GB of RAM.


There is a note I'd like to add though. While people say you need a 64 bit OS to fully use 4GB of RAM, they assume, there is a performance boost going from 3.5 GB of RAM to 4GB of RAM.

Why go to a 64 Bit OS and gain .5 - .7 GBs of RAM but lose performance due to the overhead of a 64 bit OS. A 32 bit OS with less RAM in most cases will outperform a 64 bit OS with all four GB of RAM. This is due to the fact that all your programs are actually running through a 32 bit emulator to work in a 64 bit OS.

 

http://www.gearsoftware.com/support/drivers.cfm

download that and itunes will install properly on vista 64 bit
credit for that goes to orev from this thread
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=205751

 

you can always use winamp

 

You could try foobar2000. I'm not 100% sure it'll work though.

 

This is totally incorrect and is FUD. There are NO significant performance differences between 32bit and 64bit, even when running 32bit applications. 32bit apps do not run in an "emulation" layer, nor do they run in a virtual machine. They run using a 32bit API that call different DLLs, but all of those DLLs are native code running directly on the CPU. Some benchmarks have shown that some operations are faster in 64bit, and some are slower, and when totaled up, the sum performance difference is very small or non-existent.

Vista 32bit is limited to 3.2GB of RAM, fixed. On XP it was variable based on what the drivers needed, but that caused too many problems so in Vista they locked it to 3.2GB. That leaves 0.8 leftover, or 800MB. That's 1/5 of the very expensive RAM that you just put into your system, which is a very large amount to be throwing away. THAT's why people want to be able to use all of that RAM, because they PAID for it.

Also in Vista, any RAM that is not in use by running programs will be used as disk cache and precached loading of programs that Vista thinks that you might want to use (based on past usage patterns). So even "free" RAM is used, and having another 800MB of it could preload a whole lot more data, potentially increasing the performance and reducing startup time for many more programs.

 

the issue with itunes is mainly it tries to find Quicktime in the Program Files folder, but since its a 32 bit app, Vista throws it into the Program Files (x86) folder. Dont ask me why Apple hardcoded it to look only in program files, its conspiracy against windows totally =P. iTunes itself works x64 (ie leopard is x64)