Home General Chat
If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.

When I'm 64-bit

Play on words with the Beatles' song :-)

Anyway techie guys, I wonder if any of you can please weigh up the pros and cons for 32-bit and 64-bit? After my main computer died in a fire last week (brand new too!), I'm looking to go Windows 7 in the New Year with a new desktop computer. I play World of Warcraft which shouldn't be a problem regardless to which 'bit' I choose but what about Age of Empires II which came out in late 1999? I'm still madly keen on Age of Empires II, even more so than AOEIII. The main thing that my OS has got to support is portable apps - Firefox, Thunderbird, Winamp, 7zip, Openoffice.org and suchlike. If I was to go 64-bit, would I have to re-download the apps? Oh, and also please, *perlease* - my beloved Paintshop Pro 7! My eyesight's too bad for Photoshop and I won't take any Corel conversions of PSP m'dear :-)

Thanks!
Beep boop. I'm a bot.

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    64bit OSes will run 32bit programs no problem. Firefox isn't actually available in 64bit from Mozilla, but the 32bit version runs fine on Windows 7 64bit. There shouldn't be any problem with using your current programs on 64bit Windows.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yeah the stuff just gets ran in 32 bit emulation. You might have the odd issue, but really the biggest problem with 64 bit initially was lack of drivers, which isn't really true nowadays.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Thanks a lot both of ya - that's really helpful. I've decided that I will go Windows 7 64-bit. Next dilemma is which 'denomination' of W7 lol - for me, either Home Premium or Ultimate I think. Not 100% sure yet :-)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Ultimate.

    But I see no point in you getting 64bit unless you have 64bit hardware or over 3GB of RAM. Otherwise, no point upgrading unless your computer can go past 4GB of RAM and you actually plan on upgrading it. 64bit is fine though. It's just most programs aren't written to take full use of 64bit. Which you would think they would be these days when computers are slowly reaching the maximum for 32bit in terms of RAM.

    I use 32bit on my desktop even though it can utilize 64bit (AMD hardware). I still don't like 64bit fully though, as said you still have some glitches with some things. But not many.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    JavaKrypt wrote: »
    Ultimate.

    But I see no point in you getting 64bit unless you have 64bit hardware or over 3GB of RAM. Otherwise, no point upgrading unless your computer can go past 4GB of RAM and you actually plan on upgrading it. 64bit is fine though. It's just most programs aren't written to take full use of 64bit. Which you would think they would be these days when computers are slowly reaching the maximum for 32bit in terms of RAM.

    I use 32bit on my desktop even though it can utilize 64bit (AMD hardware). I still don't like 64bit fully though, as said you still have some glitches with some things. But not many.
    well being 64bit is not only about just ram! with 64bit computer you can do calculations with big numbers which you cannot do in 32 bit computer.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Monserrat wrote: »
    Thanks a lot both of ya - that's really helpful. I've decided that I will go Windows 7 64-bit. Next dilemma is which 'denomination' of W7 lol - for me, either Home Premium or Ultimate I think. Not 100% sure yet :-)



    Don't waste your money on Ultimate, it's only useful if you're a business user.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I've already ordered Home Premium 64-bit.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Im working with the 64bit flavour of windows 7 home premium. MMMMMMMMM.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    MrG - how are you finding it? I've had 2 programs that won't work under W7 but I got 'em working under VMWare running Win 2000. Why need W7 "Ultimate" when you have VMWare for free? :-D
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    No issues as of yet!
Sign In or Register to comment.