32bit vs 64bit

[localzuk]

We're looking towards our migration to Windows 7 next summer, and one of the issues I'm sure everyone else has faced is the choice of 32bit or 64bit.

 

From what I've been told - SIMS.net should still go on 32bit, and Office 32bit is the preferred one. So, what did you all stump up for?

 

Did you bite the bullet and go 64bit?

[Dom_]

32 bit here - hardly any of our machines would have benefited from 64 bit so was a no brainer!

[localzuk]

32 bit here - hardly any of our machines would have benefited from 64 bit so was a no brainer!

 

So, none of your machines have 4GB RAM then?

[Dom_]

So, none of your machines have 4GB RAM then?

 

 

I said hardly any, most have 3GB, and with the amount of win 95 software teachers expect to run, I've had a much smaller headache on 32 bit...

[kaphc]

Our Admin PC is on 32-bit, which I think is so that it works with Facility. Everything else we've gone for 64-bit so far.

 

The only upgrades we haven't done are the teacher laptops which we are looking at this term. I've been running the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor on them to check software and hardware compatibility as an initial guideline - some have 1Gbof RAM so will only go to 32-bit anyway!

[Roberto]

We've gone 64 bit everywhere except a few tablet/netbook machines that only have 32 bit touchscreen drivers.

 

We've had no problems - we simply told teaching departments "The following software will not work (....) so you need to find replacements for them, which we will be happy to assist you with"

[bwestlake]

were on 32 bit xp and 64 bit 7, upgraded a large percent of the school, and offices will be done once we have fully weined staff from NOVA T, in the summer we "removed it" and only a couple of staff have asked for it, but we made them aware that it WILL disappear when 7 is upgraded

[broc]

We are busy with the move to 64-bit as part of our new system which will go live next year. As an interim we switched around 90 systems last summer from Windows 7 Enterprise 32-bit to 64 bit to allow us to run Adobe CS5 whicjh needs 64 bit for video editing.

 

We had already migrated our application base to run under Windows 7 32-bit 2 years ago, so far we have not seen any specific 64-bit failures.

 

The biggest headache so far has been with application packaging & deployment as you now have to contend with Program Files & Program Files (x86) & System32 & SysWOW64 so local mods via registry updates or file copies can end up in the wrong place.

 

I have been running SIMS.net on 64-bit for 15 months now on my system without a problem; General advice on Office is to stick with 32-bit, we will roll out Office 2010 32-bit at the same time

Edited November 15, 2012 by broc

[Oaktech]

we are all 32 bit on our primary site... For the ridiculous software we need to run, and the fact the speediest curriculum machine only has 2gb.

[Pottsey]

64-bit here and the only real problem was the basic Sims installer wouldn’t work. But once installed Sims works fine. The only other problem we ran into was IE 64-bit and no flash support but that has no longer a problem.

[sparkeh]

64 bit for the Win 7 machines, old XP machines on 32 bit.

No probs with 64 bit so far other than the slight annoyance with deploying software noted above.

MS recommend you install Office 32 bit.

[zag]

32bit win 7 all over here.

 

There is no benefit of 64bit machines other than allowing the extra ram to be seen.

 

But if you can find software that needs 3gb+ of Ram then its very very badly written

[plexer]

64bit Win 7 here some machines had 4GB+ allready which wasn't being utilized by XP 32bit.

 

All the hardware supports 64bit and means I only need 1 print driver architechture.

 

Ben

[6Foot2]

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.

[sidewinder]

I went 32bit when we changed in the summer just because most PCs have 2GB of RAM and the new ones with 4 arn't going to struggle with 3.

 

That said, sort of wish I had gone 64 bit now, as it would have been more future proof and meant I only needed one print driver per printer

 

Probably will start moving to 64 bit over the next year

Edited November 15, 2012 by sidewinder

[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.

Edited November 15, 2012 by sonofsanta
bit ambiguous at the end, made it sound like it was no different from XP64. It is. It is very different.

[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.

Edited November 26, 2012 by Arcolite