32bit vs 64bit

[sonofsanta]

64 bit. Gonna have to go at some point (look at the server OS's, they're x64 only) so may as well go now.

Not really had any problems here, to be honest. Nearly all software went on happily. Never did get ProDesktop working, but when I actually asked the department, they didn't want it anyway. Has simplified printers as 2008R2 and Win7 x64 are the same driver. We have a handful of machines already on 4Gb and about 100 on 8Gb now (purchases this summer for the main IT suites, why not ) and I know I'm not going to have to worry about it in future.

I would treat x64 as the standard option now, and x86 as an alternative only when necessary. x64 still has a bit of a bad rep from the XP64 days, when driver support was god-awful (I know, I tried it), but it's no different to x86 now.

DOUBLE-EDIT: got no problems with Facility running on x64 here? Possibly because anyone using is only actually running it from the x86 server. And yeah, Office x86 is the recommended install because of plugin compatibility; MS themselves say only to use x64 if you regularly deal with enormous spreadsheets.

[mrbios]

Surprised you've left it so late to move even to 32bit to be honest, personally went from XP > 7 32bit > 7 64bit, used the 32bit as an intermediary to ensure things ran on windows 7 ok first and allow people to adjust, then when the next summer came along tested all the software on 64bit and rolled that out. Very few PCs left on 32bit now, I'd say about 85% are 64bit.

The only area where I've found 64bit to be an issue is 3 admin PCs where they still insist on using NOVA-T4 from SIMs, but i have stressed to them that it's no longer supported and they need to move to T6 sooner rather than later!

[john]

Our Admin PC is on 32-bit, which I think is so that it works with Facility.

Facility runs fine on 64bit machines I speak from experience all my admin machines are 64 bit Win 7 Enterprise and run Facility fine and have done since launch

We are about 98% 64bit the 2% missing are either Atom based netbooks (thus not 64bit chips) or Ye-Olde PCs that are EOL and due to go any month now.

[3s-gtech]

64bit Windows 7 here, few legacy XP machines and a couple of tablets on 7 32bit as they have CoreDuo processors. Most PCs have 4 or 8GB of RAM so it makes sense, plus we use 64bit CS5.5 programs. We don't have any issues with SIMS, though of course NovaT4 doesn't work - there's a 32bit VM for them to RDP to if needed.

[Earthling]

Slowly migrating staff laptops and pc's to Win 7 x64.

I want to migrate to 7 and have images built ready for the curriculum pc's, but.......wait for it.......my Senior Tech hasn't even looked at Windows 7, still runs XP, and the only time he tried to install a printer on a W7 staff laptop, I had to re-image it and do it myself.

I don't want to be in a position where I'm the only one (of two) that can support 450 W7 boxes, so we're at a bit of an impasse.

[localzuk]

Surprised you've left it so late to move even to 32bit to be honest, personally went from XP > 7 32bit > 7 64bit, used the 32bit as an intermediary to ensure things ran on windows 7 ok first and allow people to adjust, then when the next summer came along tested all the software on 64bit and rolled that out. Very few PCs left on 32bit now, I'd say about 85% are 64bit.

The only area where I've found 64bit to be an issue is 3 admin PCs where they still insist on using NOVA-T4 from SIMs, but i have stressed to them that it's no longer supported and they need to move to T6 sooner rather than later!

We had no reason to do any migration until now. Plus the school has had a year of insanity having gone through 3 tech support people until I came back. So now, we're doing proper planning on it.

Currently installing our 3 new servers with Server 2012 so we can start to modernise away from XP and 2003 server. (Has to be 2012 for Hyper V SMB3 support).

[SYNACK]

64bit to everything, better drivers and a single type of drivers, no more messing getting dirty old 32bit printer drivers shoehorned into 2k8 server. It also uses the CPU better but does use up a little more RAM in memory.

[synaesthesia]

64bit here with no issues at all. Going for 32bit this day and age without very good reason is just lack of forethought IMO and as I've said many times before it's no worse than purposefully opting to buy hardware/software that fell foul of the Millennium Bug. Why not have support for 4GB+ of memory when memory costs so little? Plenty of software will make proper use of it, some actually needs it (Adobe CS, Sibelius 7, Solidworks). And it could save a large headache further down the line should you need to upgrade without having to do massive rebuilds and sort out all the drivers for printers.

[MatthewL]

Where I can I would put x64 out, we have numerous systems that only work is x86 so our main bulk will be x86 which is annoying but as its our core software from the government we have no choice till its redeveloped.

[Arcolite]

Fully 64bit here. All of our machines had 4gb so it made sense to use to make the most of it. A few of our Video editing boxes have 8gb.
While most applications do not need all that RAM, we do have some that run miles better the more RAM you give them (Pro Tools, Sibelius, CS5.5, SolidWorks).

Haven't had any issues. Infact, as others have stated, it gave us the oppertunity to ditch some of the old legacy applications that used to cause us headaches.

It's also one less headache that we don't have to do in the future. Going from XP to W7 was stressful enough. The thought of doing XP to W732 then to W764 in the future or running both at the same time just seemed daft.

[sparkeh]

it gave us the oppertunity to ditch some of the old legacy aplpications that used to cause us headaches.

True, true.
"Oh sorry <Terrible piece of garbage software X> deosn't work with 64 bit..."
*snicker*

[Michael]

All sites are Windows 7 32Bit and Office 2010 32Bit, with only Windows Server 2008 R2 being 64Bit.

Reasons being software compatibility, but also 32Bit works on netbooks better than 64Bit. Plus 32Bit Windows 7 and Office 2010 patches are smaller than their 64Bit equivalents.

[sted]

ive always run x64 win7 (but x86 office though ive been running x64 on mine and never noticed any issues) never seen the point of x86 and is other have said i can ditch some awful software
when win7 came out and with server 08r2 being x64 only i presumed the next consumer version of windows (win8 as it turned out) would be x64 only so i elected to et the pain out of the way in 1 step so everything xp is 32bit everything above is 64bit means i dont have to worry about memory etc (had a laptop on friday that had 6gb in it)

[gshaw]

Went 32-bit this summer to make sure everything ran OK, x64 next summer now the Windows 7 setup is running nicely

[easytrace-support]

Windows 7 64 Bit everywhere [except the Canteen where the touch screen tills are still XP 32 Bit and the Canteen workstation is Windows 7 32 Bit because EasyTrace/Crystal Reports requires 32 Bit]

I saw going to 64 Bit as an opportunity to drop some EXTREMELY old [16 Bit] software which was running on our old network. They gave us nothing but problems. Can't run them now. Sorry.

Hi DaveP, you may be interested to know that our latest release of EasyTrace no longer uses Crystal Reports and will work fine in a x64 environment. You are welcome to contact the support desk for further information.