Vista 64 bit
 

We are looking at trying Vista Ultimate or Business, 64 bit. Will get at least 4 GB RAM, perhaps 8.

Anyone have any personal experience with these setups?

As long as you don't need any legacy software (anything made cheaply, or before 2007), you should be perfectly fine.

Things that won't work: Codecs, a ton of shovelware, spyware, malware, crapware, and virtually anything shareware.

Things that do: PuTTy, 7-Zip.

It's funny, every place that allows us to configure our own laptops don't seem to want to let us get the 64 bit option.

Guess my ICQ 2001b won't work, huh?

Drivers are also scarce. I doubt you'll see a natively working webcam (with apps) for awhile.

I went with 4G for my lappy, tried Vista64, and ended up dropping back to Vista/32 and losing three quarters of a gig when I need Windows.

I'm running 64bit Vista on my HTPC. I've had a few problems with drivers. Adobe claims that Photoshop CS2 is not compatible...They want to force an upgrade but fuck em.....It is compatible other than one small glitch that is easily worked out.

The one downside I have found is that 64bit supposedly does not support SPDIF output for digital audio. Every Dolby DTS sound card I tried had problems.

So....Now I'm sitting here with over $600.00 in very high end RAM that would be useless under a 32 bit system so I either take the RAM down to a lesser quality, slower, and smaller amount OR I lose the Dolby DTS.

Oddly enough, the on-board SPDIF jack seems to work fairly well but does not support the higher end audio.

Bastards. :321GFY

Sometime late summer, early fall Vegas 64 bit comes out. It's a free update for people that own Vegas 8. For me to do it I would have to get vista 64. I would love to hear someone rave about it, would make me feel better when the times to make the switch. I havent read any raves to date.

I run Vista 64bit ... Ultimate Edition. Not a single problem so far :) All drivers work ... I have 64bit drivers for all my hardware.

It's honestly not that different; just some core routines are replaced with 64 bit counterparts which is a fuoll register size on the current CPUs. Even if you had a 64 bit line and had to split it across two, it's no big fucking deal, since we're no longer dealing in single Mhz.

Unless you really, really, really, really need more than 3.2GB of RAM for OS+Application, there's virtually no need to adopt at this time; time_t will hold on for a couple more decades.

yes, I have Vista64 with 8GB. It's going well so far. The only problem arose when trying to get my XP machines to be able to read and write files with the Vista machine. The extra security stuff is annoying.

and Quicktime is not a problem...you can just get QT alternative and everything works fine.

what grouch said..

also, here's grouchy's high school yearbook pic...

http://marketsmart.googlepages.com/grouchy_admin.jpg

First thing first. If it's an existing machine, run the MS Vista Upgrade Advisor.

Then take a gander at the Help Community regarding any issues the advisor says you may experience. Ask any and all questions you need to know - no matter how simple.

yeah i have 4gb and vista ultimate... downgraded to xp as vista still runs too slow for me... even with all that ram

+1 in terms of app support

Vista = Headaches.

No one uses it in the business world that runs a fotune 500 company and isn't trying to get publicity by having Microsoft do a story on them.

I'm one sexy bitch!

Vista = no harder than XP to use etc. When it first came out, 3rd party manufacturers were too slow to get on board... but that's long gone. All major hardware makers have Vista drivers aplenty.

I'm running Vista 64 Ultimate but with a very powerful hardware setup and no driver issues to date. Just some irritating things like some 32-bit software leaving artifacts on the screen and QuickTime videos not playing correctly. However, the latter is likely more of a video card issue that I have yet to resolve.

Typical attitude which will cause many US companies to be behind the 8-ball in tech in the coming year.

I just had an IT auditor from Switzerland give me some serious shit for a few XP boxes that were on their VPN tunneled offshore network. Vista is the most secure and reliable Windows to date. Tried, tested and PROVEN

Put it like this: The tech industry in the Western world has got lazy. Vista proves who are the real techs from the "dabblers".

Vista = Headaches for people who load software onto boxes without RTFM