Planetfurry BBS

[The Silver Coyote]

If we're talking about a 32 bit address bus (as opposed to a data bus), I think it has to do with how many memory addresses a 32 bit wide address bus can talk to, Mike. 32 bits of address data yields 4.295 Gb (roughly) of "addressability," in other words the maximum amount of memory a 32 bit bus can work with. A 64 bit bus can theoretically work with ... well, a lot more than that (1.89 x 10^19 address bits).

My shot in the dark, based on the classes I took ... how many years ago? <reaches for the calculator again ...>

While we're beating on Windows 7, I've noticed that some drivers written for devices to be used with Windows XP don't work in Windows 7. The drivers for my EOS 20D camera and my Palm Z22 come to mind ...

SC

[anthony]

Most well-written 32bit programs will run on 64bit versions of W7.
In theory, it's only 32bit drivers that won't work...

The most important question is really if the PC supports 64bit or not.
(I think MS has a tool to test it, but can't be bothered to find out)

[Kellan Meig'h]

It is these very reasons that I 'upgraded' my laptop from Vista Premium to XP Pro. By the way, the average user has no need for 64 bit processing and such a fat buss pipe. 32 bit is still more than adequate for the Joe Average User that wants to surf the net and send email.

Oh, SC, I'm not referring to Joe Latrans, either.

And you can be sure that I will stick with my Office 2003 until I have severe compatibility problems with whatever new file format M$ comes up with to sell you a new office suite.

Kellan

[The Silver Coyote]

No worries, Kel. "Average" describes Joe quite well.

I agree with your assertion, Anthony, the caveat being "well written." I'd guess that roughly 20% of the software I work with falls into the category of "well written." The rest of it I put up with because some work-related application or policy requires it.

I don't honestly know whether any of my PCs are 64 bit products. I had thought that most post-Pentium Wintel processors were 64 bit devices, but never really bothered to look into the system board capabilities for them, to be honest. That little tool would come in handy only if I had more than one Vista machine to worry about. As everything on my home network runs some variant of XP (with all applicable service packs installed) except the new HP dv6 laptop The Fox has, again my interest level is somewhat ... small.

I should tinker with the 32 / 64 bit settings on that new dv6 and see what happens, not only with the machine but also with the drivers for my Canon camera.

Thanks for the heads up on that one.

SC

[hikaru]

A popular misconception is that a 32bit OS can't access more than 3.5 or 4G of memory. This is an artificial limit that M$ has imposed. The 32bit of Windows 2003 Datacenter edition can access 128GB of memory.

Little known fact. Windows XP before SP1 could access > 4G memory with the /PAE boot option. Microsoft fixed that "bug" so they could charge more for it later.

Cheers!

[anthony]

[Nicolai Borovskaya]

My HP DV7 is quite happy running Ubuntu Linux 9.10, full 64 bit. One of the reasons I bought this model.

I do have issues with a few things that are heavily Windoze biased, like Flash. Perhaps a third of the Flash I objects I click (I have a filter that prevents them from autoloading) work properly, about half that many will run with glitches (links don't work, sound stops after some seconds, etc.), The rest don't run at all, I just get a blank screen. Those problems I wouldn't mind working out.

Just FYI, my browser is Firefox 3.5.7. No, I won't turn my filter off, there's too much malware is buried in Flash presentations.

I probably need some m$ .dll files or some such, and then I need to get them properly associated. Wonder why all these Linux developers can't figure that out.

[South_Munjoy]

[Tora_Frogg]

[anthony]

Cheapscate?

Do you have any idea what these things cost when they were new?
(Same weight as a 9" netbook, but 6Hour battery life, DVD-player, 13" LCD, fast HDD, loads of RAM. It wasn't at the top of the line when it came out, it WAS the top of the line.)

Or the EliteBook 2530 I want to replace it with?

These are not 'consumer' notebooks...

[Hawke]

I dont know...I like windows 7, I have never had a problem with it, runs great considering my PC was built from the cheapest new Hardware available. Pretty much any processor AMD can be x86 and x64 compliant. Never have problems with software either.

[Leonato]

[tobi3B]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUawhjxLS2I&feature=related

Office the movie