I have to buy a new laptop and have a choice of Win 7 OS flavors. What are the pro's and con's of the 32 bit vs. 64 bit?
I would get 64, but I have a lot of old* software and worry it may not run under 64. But then a lot of it was released as 8 or 16 bit and works fine on my current XP which is probably 32 bit.
* e.g., WP-5(DOS), Lotus123v5, PhotoShop-v3, Adobe-v4 ...
buying windows 7: 32 vs. 64 ?
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rusticdogru
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Re: buying windows 7: 32 vs. 64 ?
Better late than never for me to reply 
There's no problems with 32 bit programs on a 64 bit machine, Windows will still run them under 32.
If your CPU supported 64bit then I see no reason not to make use of it, not to mention you'll have the added to be able to use more RAM. Some software too will benefit greatly, PhotoShop and the like. Any stigma attached to 64bit really comes from the bad old days when very few drivers were available and hardware support was a big issue.
There's no problems with 32 bit programs on a 64 bit machine, Windows will still run them under 32.
If your CPU supported 64bit then I see no reason not to make use of it, not to mention you'll have the added to be able to use more RAM. Some software too will benefit greatly, PhotoShop and the like. Any stigma attached to 64bit really comes from the bad old days when very few drivers were available and hardware support was a big issue.
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Peter-DG
- Mystified Moa
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Re: buying windows 7: 32 vs. 64 ?
Just a note from my further research:
Windows 32 bit will not support more than ~4 GB of memory (RAM).
Makes sense - 2^32 is ~4G.
Windows 32 bit will not support more than ~4 GB of memory (RAM).
Makes sense - 2^32 is ~4G.