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Paul, I'm curious as to whether you know anything about getting 64-bit Vista OSes from Lenovo...I just purchased a T61 that comes preinstalled with Vista Ultimate and I might at some point desire to try x64 myself...just curous. I look forward to hearing more about your x64 experiences.

Could someone simply post the primary benefits to x64 computng?

For example, its my understanding the vast majority of 32bit Vista computers only recognize up to 3.1GB of RAM when I/O adressing is considered. With x64 Vista computing that ceiling is raised significantly.

What are the other benefits?

I have a Dell D820 that I put Vista Ultimate 32 on back in Dec on. I have been happy with Vista but I was having problems with the reliability ratings. I decided that I would try Vista Ultimate 64 on it about a month ago and I am very glad that I did. The reliability rating has never been so good on the 32 bit version. I am not a gamer so that was not an issue. I do virtual machines so I do have 4 gigs of RAM and I am disappointed about only have 3.25 gigs available. But my system is faster that it was before I am not having any issues with waking it from sleep mode and I have not had any issues with drivers at all. The Thing that I learned even with the 32 bit install was to use only the drivers that windows downloads whenever possible. As for as software is concerned I am running just about all of the office 2007 software, and mindjet’s mindmanager Pro version 7, Adobe Reader and Audible’s manager for audio books, virtualpc, Synctoy, and flash does work with the 32 bit version of IE.

I've been Vista x86 too on my Dell m1710 notebook since late December last year.  Just the past weekend, I used another hdd to install Vista x64 onto and everything went just fine with the exception of one single piece of software that I personally won't do without...... i8kfangui.  The fanio.sys driver won't load anymore in a reasonable fashion (those who've tried know what I'm saying here) because it's not signed.

Until I can control my notebook fans on Vista x64, I won't be running it.  Again, other than one thing, I had no issues.

I just want to keep the temps down, as this beast can become a scorcher if I let it.

Reg, I am no expert on this but the 64bit (x64) environment allows the machine to address more memory (above 4GB) and processors (more than 4).

The BIG benefits would be for software that is intensive in these areas, eg. video, photo editing, gaming, design etc.  Anything that has to processes large amounts of data.

Unfortunately at the moment that means you have to have the hardware and software to utilize this.

So, if your hardware profile is below 4GB of memory and 4 CPU's, then there is no real advantage, except for the exercise of doing it.

A good example is video conversion .. At the moment it takes a long time to convert from one format to another.  When you line up all your ducks, ie. hardware, ALL the software (they all have to be 64bit versions, not 32bit emulations), it should take significantly less time.

Hope that helps,

Dave.

I have just formatted and installed Vista X64 on my desktop and laptop, I was a bit catious at first but I came across only one problem and that was iTunes would not run properly but after a quick Google that was fixed.

Overall Vista X64 is great and very stable OS.