Good troll, Jaq.

Got the job done generating hits, that's for sure.

Suggestion: Next time, tell everyone that Vista requires a different kind of super-expensive, unavailable gas than any other OS to run.

Just about as asinine and uninformed as your DVD/RW statements...

So, does it actually say "MSFT Troll" or "FlameBait" on your job title?

I'd run 64bit on my Macbook Pro (2.2ghz, 4GB) if Apple would release 64bit Boot Camp drivers. Its the only thing holding me back right now...

64 bit is very good, but at this moment, after more year first launch, is not available all drivers for ODBC.Only available is for SQL Server(installation is for default); too MS Access not install it.
If situation is this, how to hope that is all compatible with driver and software?
Achille

I've tried 64 bit, and just don't think it is ready for prime time yet, at least not for the average home user.

Maybe it is best for businesses, but home users may have an odd collection of hardware that lacks 64 bit drivers, and I don't think that much consumer level software takes advantage of 64 bit, do they?

For me, 32 bit XP is plenty good enough at home.

Serious people dont't buy computers do use its OS! They are driven by productivity apps, not by drivers. When high-end apps like PhotoShop are release in 64-bit version, users will certainly adopt a x64 OS.

Dell doesn't even offer x64 _as an option_ for anything that you'd put on your desk. How does that make sense?

Have seen the performance increases in 64 bit with XP and Vista over 32 bit counterparts - but seems same poor planning on drivers as XP. Till MS stresses development of drivers to manufacturers of peripheral and basic devices or subsidizes the development of such. Ain't never gonna happen. Sad.

>>Till MS stresses development of drivers to manufacturers of peripheral and basic devices

They already do, go look at the Windows Vista logo requirements. 99% of any hardware produced HAS to have a 64bit driver to get MS approval.

"On a few quick clicks through this morning, BetaNews did find 64-bit Vista-compatible drivers in categories such as printers. But for some consumer device classes -- including CD/RW and DVD/RW storage devices, digital media receivers, and Bluetooth adapters -- there was virtually nothing for 64-bit Vista."

Holy Cow...

Ok, and the person that wrote this is either new to computers or just technically insane...

CD/DVD/RW use standard interfaces, there are no additional drivers needed unless it was a really odd model.

Even USB versions of these devices use standard interfaces.

(And yes, Vista x64 knows how to work with these standard interfaces without 'special drivers'.)

Bluetooth - again, there are a handful of devices(chipsets) used, and our techs have yet to find one that is not supported on Vista x64.

From an OLD laptop with one of the first miniPCI bluetooth adapters to even an ancient IOGear USB 1.x Bluetooth Adapter - all have drivers that work fine in Vista x64.

Microsoft and most Bluetooth dongles also work and sync automatically for HID even in WinPE (setup, boot console, etc).

Does the author not realize that MOST XP x64 drivers work fine on Vista on upper level drivers that run in User Mode and require no signature? So even 'devices' that don't have a Vista specific driver, work fine.

Microsoft requires all vendors/MFRS to produce 64bit drivers for their products to get the Windows logo, this means that virtually everything made anymore automatically will have 64bit drivers.

The 64bit from the XP x64 days of being the redhead stepchild are over, k?

PS.

Vista x64 is more than just larger than 4GB RAM address space. The OS is a FULL 64bit OS, unlike OS X that is a 32bit OS with 64bit addressing enabled for applications.

Being 64bit from the ground up gives the OS access to additional registers and other tricks of the 64bit CPUs.

You also have a 64bit memory management system that doesn't have to use reference tables for pagefiles, caching, etc that reference volumes and files larger than 4GB.

Then add to that Vista x64's ability to shove two 32bit memory read/writes into a 64bit chunk, so RAM isn't wasted and RAM cycles are faster for 32bit applications, and they also get a boost in speed from that besides the OS handling everything else in 64bit mode.

Then you add in the 64bit drivers of Vista x64, which are a 'good thing' as the native 64bit drivers can shove more data between hardware faster. And in video drivers, this gets VERY important and is why Vista x64 tends to gain about 10% FPS in gaming.

After reading yours and others about the improvements that 64 bit gives I have now been right tracked to my next purchase,which after reading this article worried me about my next purchase next year,which was to be 64 bit,after all who wants to go back to 8 and 16 bit machines,games or other computers we live or die by advancement.

XP x64 running 100% stable for years.
My only problems with it are MS created ones such as Live Messenger not wanting to run on XP x64 or Server products any more. Forcing me to run older MSN installer and app in Win2k compatibility mode although Live did work at one point 100% fine until Microsoft decided to allow Mac OSX to have better support then it's own 64 bit offering.
Microsoft 64 bit OS has been ready since XP, or 2003 server to not BS, question is if the average idiot is finally ready to buy hardware that needs it and is supported by it.
I also miss my Alpha running 64 bit Windows 2000. Ran perfect for the beta it was. :)

Windows XP Professional x64 would have to be the most stable and reliable version of Windows I've used, and is tied with Vista Ultimate 64-bit as my favorite version of Windows to date to use in a workstation role. It's probably a testament to the underlying Server 2003 code base, though... but whatever works. :)

As soon as Cisco releases a 64-bit version of their VPN client, I'll get behind 64-bit Windows completely. For the time that I ran 64-bit Vista, I had to rely on a VM of 32-bit Windows XP to establish a VPN connection to all of our customers with PIX 501s... which was rather annoying, but effective.

The drivers issue, however, is steadily becoming less and less of one... for me, at least. The main problem that I ran across with 64-bit Vista Ultimate was the unsigned unofficial XBCD 360 drivers (no fault of Microsoft's). It was frustrating, but I harbored no hard feelings toward Microsoft because of it. I've applauded their more aggressive security measures with Vista from the start.

Well let me put it this way:

The world has to change to 64bit by 2038 as that's when the unix timestamp stops working.

You have no choice.

Vista x64 rocks if you have the right hardware equipments and software. No problems at all

Got a new computer in the fall of 07. Bought an oem copy of Vista Ultimate SP1 64bit a couple of months ago. It's been running pretty good from the start. Most of the hardware drivers installed fine, maybe with the exception of 3 or so, which I hunted down online and now all the hardware works perfectly (and I have quite a few peripherals).

Although there have been a few headaches, like a few BSOD's. I've had more BSOD's on Vista than I've ever had on XP Pro. Low-level drivers for firewall software, soundcard, have given me occasional BSOD's. Thankfully tinkering under the hood for a bit has fixed these issues *knocks on wood*.

Been running steady now for a while, haven't formatted at all (first Vista install).

I went for Vista X64 from the word go, only had a few small issues with getting some programs to work correctly, but after some searching i found freeware programs to make up the slack.
Drivers have been good from the word go, although the nvidia drivers are always iffy, but work ok.
No bsod's or such unlike XP X64, highly recomend to go for Vista X64 if you have the horsepower to run vista.

this is probably betanews.com's most popular article, ever.

mission:
get max amount of traffic by posting an article that is knowingly going to cause people to get outraged and post maximum amount of comments.

Result:
mission accomplished.

(BTW, vista x64 runs fine, and has plenty of good drivers, for a long time now)

Oh no, this pales in comparison to some of the threads I've been a part of^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HI've seen historically.

I seem to recall many threads with over 300 comments.

;-)

lol kinda true. lol MS topics always gets lots of feedback lol

Hey we all gotta deal with them wither we like them or now.

I have worked with MS for years, and Vista was the first time that we beta testers kinda got the shaft from them when our recommendations and feedback was flat out ignored and dismissed. MS did what they wanted to do anyway, and this was the result...

I should say this has happened before too. anyone recall Windows ME fiasco. Vista is a similar situation. I just hope it turns itself around eventually as they did with XP by the time SP2 came out.

Windows ME was just an half assed OS for legacy equipment that just was so bad they had people even on the MS sponsored tech shows telling people Nope sorry we just can't deal with this anymore. Especially TechTV.. That gem of a show Tried its hardest to get it to work and just could not. Ultimately switching back across the board, and from that point on ME was defunct.

Those same people now out on their own as consultants or other network hosts, or web feed commentators and so on, are saying the same things about Vista now with their older equipment.

I remember watching Chris Pirillo on a web feed in the middle of the night practically tearing his hair out trying to get Vista working with his scanner and printers and other stuff. Finally he just was like F this, after weeks and weeks, and got online ranting about it, and finally switched back to XP.

Good old Leo Laporte had more luck with Vista in the end, but only after he swapped out EVERYTHING to accommodate it. I mean EVERYTHING across the board. Even the mouse was incompatible he was using at the time. But then again THAT was what the OEMs wanted wasn't it?

Chris Pirillo? Really? The guy who wrote: "Windows Vista: Lipstick on a Pig" had a bad experience with Vista?

*laughing*

Puh-lease.

Just for grins, I installed Vista Ultimate (32 - SP1) on my Wife's HP the two weekends ago.

Specs: AMD X2 64 4000+, 2GB of RAM, 250MB SATA HDD, Asus A8N (HPOEM) with the NVIDIA 6100(6150?) LE onboard graphics chipset.

Installed it, updated the graphics driver (Via Device Manager, no web-surfing) but did have to insert the CD for her Lexmark all-in-one, and it is running flawlessly.

Scores a 3.0 on the Vista "Experience Index" due to the onboard GPU, but Aero works just fine.

This is a commodity system. No upgrades, direct from the store (1410n, if I recall correctly). I really can't see what all the fuss is about. If it's older than the 1410, fine, don't bother. If it's newer and you still want XP, fine again. If you're going to try and claim it's *nothing* but a PITA, we've got a problem. ;)

FYI: Chris now uses Vista daily as of September from what I've seen from his posts on font fixing and such)

I've been using Vista x64 since it was freakin released! I've NEVER had driver problems except for my E-MU 0404. So myself and the 5 other people in the world with that card in Vista x64 had to wait a little while but that's no big deal. Everything I've ever done works great.

This is really puzzling. I would expect BetaNews doing their homework before posting articles.

"few if any 64-drivers are available for some categories of consumer products, including DVD/RW devices"

Come on... a DVD/RW device needs a driver from the internet? All the units I have installed have drivers included in Vista x64. Almost all devices were detected automatically or had drivers pushed by Windows Update. Most IHVs offer Vista x64 drivers, so?

At home I run my home audio studio with Sonar 7 running on Vista x64, ASIO drivers... no issues at all... in fact, it is more reliable than XP and Vista x86.

This is just another article written by her to bash MS, she is a very poor journalist.

I'm more interested by the -1 that you recieved for that comment than the actual content of it.

It seems the comment is only stating what virtually everyone is stating that the article is inherently wrong so quid pro quo the journalism is.

He got the mod because the truth hurts.

Damn near every article she posts is MSFT flame-bait.

I am using windows vista 64bit and I have zero problems. I can burn dvd's/cd's play games better then I ever have before, supreme commander for example can eat up to 3gb of my 4gb of ram with a big long game.

Printers, scanner, external hard drives, creative xfi, nvidia, ati video cards all have 64bit vista drivers and work perfectly.

I was presented windows vista 64bit with an hp laptop with 4gb of ram. Everything worked perfectly, I was so amazed, that I migrated my Core 2 extreme/ nforce 790i / Geforce 8800GTS based system to 64bit with 4GB of ram.

I have no issues what so ever, so I have transitioned to 64bit and I am here to stay.

The only single issue I found is no free third party firewall exist other then the one built in vista.

All 32bit based games/applications work perfectly fine. Itunes has 64bit version and roxio etc all work fine as well.

So no problems at all, just make sure if you get it without sp1 integrated in the install dvd, you only have 2gb of ram installed, there is one heck of a nasty bug and it will not install with 4gb of ram without sp1.

Strange, I didn't have that problem. I went back through my Intel's BIOS updates and I see that there was a patch for that. I guess I updated my motherboard's BIOS before I installed x64.

Free 64bit firewall?

Here it is: http://fileforum.betanew...rewall_Pro/1132729513/1

My compliments to the author (Jaqueuline Emigh)for creating arguably the finest discourse that ain't BlowRay!
Be that as it may, this thread is the mostest, come back Dave, we need you!
I just realised I'm gonna get flamed summpin' terrible for using the term "discourse"!

Is any of you V64 users doing anything besides standard productivity?

Is anyone doing Digital Audio with VST & ASIO by any chance? What's the scoop?

Thanks

Yeah. E-MU ASIO works fine. Adobe Audition & soundbooth, Reason, Cubase all work great now that they finally have reasonably stable drivers.

Thanks for the heads up.

My 64bit Vista works great (in a VM) it seemed to have all of it's drivers before I reloaded it's host and virtualized Vista.

s***tiest article LOL. Since when did ATAPI CD/DVD drives require drivers? Since when did consumers start buying SCSI optical drives?

Also Data Execution Protection is also in 32-bit Vista. In fact, 32-bit Vista offers software-based DEP which is completely different (safe Structured Exception Handling) from real NX-bit protection. 64-bit Vista enforces hardware DEP (since almost all 64-bit processors have NX-bit support) and doesn't fallback to software-based DEP.

"Since when did consumers start buying SCSI optical drives?"

Since the Seagate ST01 (8bit, late 80s early 90s)

heh

In the beginning when there where none or very small buffert memory in those, you got SCSI for stability.. you ruined less discs that way :)

32-bit Vista fully supports hardware NX-bit DEP protection just like 64-bit Vista does. You just have to be using a compatible processor. On older processors without this feature 32-bit Vista falls back to software DEP.

Yep, my first optical recorder was a Ricoh SCSI CD-RW drive... back in '98, when I got my dual Voodoo2 cards. :)

Mom, was reading to me one night some 3-4 months ago), we were looking at Engadget, and she said try this (my mom is one smart lady)!
She said why not try 64 bit on ya MBA, "look they are many who try this"!
Well 'lo & behold, typing this on a "Mac Book Air" w'doze partition, what a treat!
Runs better on this rig (which is even more sharp than the Tool's wit), than any of my other 'spec'd' rigs, what a hoot!!
Pitmongrel (if you're lurking), ya oughta try this this, works a treat.
And, I must thank PC_Tool, it was his post at "Megazip", that gave me the ISO to download, thanks buddy!
Time to go back to MOM's teat.

Never heard of it, zridling.

Get a life.

I swapped from v32 to v64 because having the functionality there in my processor simply sitting there going to waste didn't sit right with me. And I kept seeing more and more applications I use release 64bit compiled versions.

I've never been happier with an MS OS, sure there's room for improvement, but I've found it more stable, and significantly smoother to use than v32. and most 64bit apps are using far less CPU time than their 32bit builds.

I was happier with v64 even on 2GB when I first installed it, with 4GB now it flies, and for the first time I really felt THIS is how windows was really meant to be, HD swapless changeover from any application.

"What do you think, is 64-bit Vista ready for mainstream? Are you running 32-bit or 64-bit?"

I think that 10 years ago or so, you never dreamed of having 4GB RAM on your home computer.. but now its starting to become the new standard. And to get all that RAM and 512MB to 1GB video ram to get used properly you must install a 64-bit OS.. 64-bit is becoming mandatory to utilize the hardware thats avalible.

And yes im on Vista 64-bit.

I also look at the time when I bought 1 meg of ram for my PC and it cost about the same as 1 gig of DDR2 today. I look at it that everything is scaling about even from the old days. Remember the day when a 1 gig hard drive was over $1,000.00?

I remember when a 100MB hard drive was $500, and you had options like MFM, RLL, SCSI, and ESDI.

At that time, 1MB was about $200, and the aboveboard you needed in your ISA slot for your 286 or better to be able to access it (since most 286 boards had up to 1MB onboard via socketed 100-120ns DRAM, later came sips and simms) was at least another $100.

Then again, I also recall a time when 16-64K of memory was more than enough for common business applications and arcade games.

heh

If I recall one of those hard drives didn't you have to reformat if you moved the pc from like horizontal to vertical? MFM or RLL can not remember.

You had to low-level format them before use, and when you changed controllers. I wouldn't be surprised if you had to low-level format when you went vertical too.

You had to drop to debug and tell the controller to issue a format whenever you blinked at them hah.

I remember formatting over and over with different interleave settings trying to maximize performance.

Low-level (1-6 hours), format, benchmark, repeat

Fewt,
I think, albeit at times, there was a moment I could recall.
Sorry what the the thing I wa going to reply to, damned I've lost it.

SGD,
Sonny, is the name of the song, and so it goes with their pocket side writer,
God, knows I'm havin fun.

What are you talking about?

Vista 64 JUST works fine
i use it since the first day

If you have official support to vista they make 64 bit drivers!!!

we have 82 PCs, 12 of them with vista 64 and 3 with vista 32.
All of them work fine will all the old Pcs and the printers and scaners...

they only thing i did not find is an old color laser printer-scanner of Konnika... we have vista 64 but unsupported because of scanner not working...

Interesting observation, my friend! Considering not one of my Brother MFC's (both networked & solo) will do XP, lt alone Vista without a great deal of grief!
Have you ever had to "find disk"!
Anyway, that I'm using "Bijan's) 64 bit Ultimate on an MBA (again thanks to PC_Tool's input on "Megazip") is a godsend!

Why can't MS invest some time and effort and flood the internet with generic drivers for Vista 64? Basically I'm NOT prepared to upgrade all of my perfectly working hardware and go out and buy in excess of 4gb memory - 8gb is just ridiculous! I've got a good motherboard & graphics card and plenty enough memory in 2gb (I might get another stick or two), but the hardware upgrade just ain't gonna happen.

Why is 8GB ridiculous ??

Because your first computer had 4MB ram ??

In that case 1 GB is just as ridiculous.. times change and hardware gets better.

Maybe you should ask the makers of your hardware to get off their lazy asss and make them. It is not MS responsibilty to make drivers for something that they didn't make. I can see it now MS sued for making drivers that work under Vista because the makers of said product wouldn't do it.

What is the big deal with 4 or 8 gig of ram. Ram is dirt cheap. I spent more on RAM for my 386 then I did for my Vista machine.

I am pissed that Vista won't run that same 386. Oh yeah at some point hardware has be upgraded. People piss and moan so much anymore its comical.

Whine on.

Because the increase of functionality is not proportional to the amount of resources required.

It is all too easy for a developer to take system resources as a commodity and focus on functionality. That is OK for general applications as there are always time and budget constraints one has to compromise for.

However, it is not OK for an Operating System. The OS should be slick and streamlined. It should be optimized on Assembler level where it matters. I don't have an issue with someone writing an app on .NET and taking the hit (and advantages) of such a move but such a comprimise is not acceptable on OS level.

That would leave more room for companies like EA to make even worse code then they presently do.

"Because the increase of functionality is not proportional to the amount of resources required."

Damn straight! Right on sister.

my friend wrote::
I started out 64 bit Vista, But, after PC issues I switched back to 32bit Vista. Imagine my surprise when all of the applications I use ran faster and worked better once running 32 bit.

my socket 754 athlon 2600 flies on windows xp64 compared to 32 bit xp/vista. unfortunately my web-cam doesn't have the 64 bit driver.

I switched to vista 64 and I can not see any speed benefit.... in fact most of the time vista 64 is slower.... and I have 8 gigs of ram and a 3 ghz quad core.....

I run Vista x64 Ultimate and every device I've plugged into my desktop works with it. Vista either already has the driver available, finds it on Windows Update or it's on a cd that comes with the device. Just like when I plug the same device in my wife’s laptop which runs Vista x86 Ultimate. I have never had to install a driver from a cd or internet to get a portable cd/dvd driver/writer to work. I have 3 different Bluetooth receivers and they all work, without installing the software that accompanied them on the cd which btw in all 3 cases also offers Vista x64 drivers! As for digital media receivers.... what are they? I find it very interesting how thorough your research actually is. A few clicks? Shouldn't you inform instead of talk BS?

To be honest, I did have a lot of problem with drivers, but eventually I'd find something "compatible". Some of them not really saying "for VISTA x64", but it works.

I guess manufacturers should put out another section just for x64.

Running fully patched Vista 64 with all the necessary drivers.... but... need to turn off aero since the M$ certified ATI drivers are crap! The drivers (various versions) stopped responding and recovered too often then with BSOD with aero turned on.

Vista 64 does has drivers, but I need stable working drivers!

I believe that it is not the responsibility of the OS manufacture to provide the updated drivers whether it is Apple or Windows. It is the responsibility of the 3rd party hardware or software manufacture to make sure that their drivers are compatible with the OS.

I do think that 64 bit will end up being the next generation but, as far as Windows is concern (Apple is a can of worms unto themselves since they also build the hardware), 3rd party hardware and software manufactures have to take the lead in complying with the requirements of 64 bit architecture

That's plain weird as I know a lot of people that have absolutely no problem like that. Check www.guru3d.com and see if anyone there can help you.

I myself however have had a problem with my nvidia card and it turned out to be temperature related. Everyone including myself blamed it on the drivers (the problem occured on x86 and x64) and it turned out to be a heat problem!

Ummm, Apple doesn't make the hardware, they just use certain brands that are manufactured to run with Mac OS. Its not like their Mac hard drives and Mac motherboards.

The stopped responding is found to be caused in both ati and nvidia. Its caused by many things. The biggest is RAM that doesnt work well with Vista. Check the voltage of your ram, make sure its under 2.1v and it should get those errors to go away.

Maybe you'd want run Memtest86 to check your RAM. It could be defective if it's giving you trouble.

+1 on Memtest+ http://www.memtest.org/

If the computer I am building can not pass 10 passes of both tests 5 and 7, I don't even bother trying to install Windows.

Dude,
Did you know MS-released drivers are submitted by hardware manufacturers? The ATI drivers you are referring to, are made by ATI. If you don't like those, go to www.ati.com and download the latest from there...

You know, complaininig is easy and free... it takes a couple of clicks to resolve the issue.

Yes, they don't make the indivitual components, but they design their computers (motherboard included), determine what components to use, and write all drivers. That basically gives them full control over where their Mac OS will run. Just imagine what happen to the slickness of Mac OS if Apple had to deal with the millions of hardware combinations Windows has to deal with. Not sure it will be "slick" anymore.

I'm realizing from this article and responses to it that really ... Vista as a 64-Bit OS makes sense... it makes complete sense for Vista to be the 64-bit successor to XP. It would have also made sense for Intel to have branded their Core2Duo processors as 64-Bit Core 2 Duo (like AMD did)...

Some people in the marketing division at Microsoft should be shot for not targeting the users that would benefit the most from Vista....

Microsoft should seriously have used this whole 'Vista User Experience' indexing business as a way to certify systems for Vista based upon 64-bit support...

And yes, my system is 64-bit and came with 32-bit Vista.

MS wanted to. Least the engineers did. It was the OEM manufacturers that went to MS and said look we are going to get stuck with millions of dollars worth of inventory if you tell everyone that Vista will not run on these. so we want you to make it 32 bit as well so it will run on our existing inventory. MS Foolishly complied.

Then the lowend market PC OEMS pulled the same garbage Thank you Compaq/HP, and insisted on the Windows Vista home basic piece of trash ala the Vista compatible vs Vista ready sticker farce.

Anyways. That's been the problem from the beginning. And Why people got so mad at MS, was cause they told the public that these machines would work with vista when they knew full well that it NEVER would run Vista well at all. But all of this was so these OEMs didn't need to eat the cost of upgrading their inventory to something ACCEPTABLE to run Vista on. Which is what your finally starting to see today.

Well.. I'm not sure that all Intel Core2Duo processors are 64 bit compatible. I Know the extreme x9000 is because that's what I have but I'm not sure the others are.

All the Core 2 Duo processors are 64 bit compatible. Heck there are even Celeron processors that support 64 bit. Most of the desktop and laptop processors released in the last 3 years support 64 bit.

Intel wisely chose not to market it that way because even now the number of 64 bit applications are so limited that promoting support for 64 bit software wouldn't dramatically improve sales. Even AMD has removed the use of 64 from their product names.

Had Vista been 64-bit only it would have been a more compelling upgrade.

even some of the non Core2Duo Pen4 ones are 64 compatible from like 4 yrs ago.

I think you hit the nail on the head about the whole reason why Vista has such a bad rap. Microsoft's collusion with hardware manufacturers to label crap hardware as being able to run Vista is for the most part responsible for the bad experiences most people have had with Vista.

Intel should follow AMD because AMD did so exceedingly well..? The volume market for neither Intel nor AMD cares about 64 bit. Those who do care know the processors are 64bit anyway.

I thought from the beginning that MS bringing out 32 bit Vista was a mistake. What people don't understand is sure more people use 32 bit because most people only know 32 bit they don't know the difference between the two. I had a friend ask me the other day what the difference was. If MS would have told hardware and software makers that their not going to bring out a 32 bit version of vista and that they should make drivers and programs that work with 64 bit they would have. They gave developers the option and of course they went 32 because its easier for them to port stuff to 32 bit rather than re-writing a program for 64 bit, its laziness on the driver and software side. They should have told hardware and software devs they were only going to make 64 bit and they would have had plenty of time to make software and drivers for it (especially since Vista was late by so much).

Look at Linux and Mac OS they're both already at 64 bit. MS has to catch up and once people go to 64 bit they won't know what they did without it. Look at how MS did it with 16 to 32 bit, they should have done it the same with with Vista 64. Maybe they'll have learned for Windows 7, but I think I heard their already going to make a 32 bit version, hopefully they'll scrap it and just go with 64.

I hear more people say they like Vista 64 over Vista 32. I hear more people say it crashes less on them.

I too thought Vista should have been 64bit only - but then you look at the trouble they had with drivers for the 32bit version, and you'll realise that would never have worked. I had to wait 16 months for one of my 32bit Vista drivers - and I'll be waiting forever (literally) for the 64bit version.

The support wasn't there for driver developers. And charging them $100k to certify their drivers _really_ doesn't help.

Microsoft released Vista driver development kits to hardware manufacturers much sooner than they did with Windows XP. Hardware manufacturers had ample time and support from Microsoft. There really was no excuse for the lack of drivers at Vista's launch.

well i think its not microsoft job to make drivers thats the hardware vendors issue, and they have had years to do it.. no exuse why there isn't. as for as more secure, as far as root kit level maybee, but other wise i say no, and the only good a/v app i seen for it is NOD32, but i run x64 on my laptop (ironicaly worked with the oem key i just download the x64 dvd) but hey run it and see what works for you :)

What is annoying is when they [manufacturers] preinstall 32 bit vista on a 64 bit machine.

What is annoying, is where is your Guru, "roll eyes", The Tool, his absence is noticed, I can see you fretting, dry tongue, nose drying out, and in need of a degree of comfort most are dying for.
Good boy, settle down!
If this doesn't get him off his chain, i'll have to pm the pit drongo!

DIAF.

My wife was in the hospital most of last week.

Seriously.

DIAF. Slowly.

Vista is designed to utilize and maximize all the resources available on the machine, no matter what the configuration is. Why have resources available and not use them. Makes sense. It's NOT like a gas tank draining away fast, so no need to conserve. x64 Vista is excellent (but I confess I detest M$). To the detractors of x64 - WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!!! And so should the software producers.

I add one more thing to my previous post. I also felt a little uncertain about migrating to x64. But that was just because of people scaring users away from it like in many comments seen here. Just do not believe this crap: you got a somewhat "OK" machine: go for x64. Thats a word from a happy x64 poweruser.

Ironically, I felt the same way but found that all my programs that I use except for Winrar works fine. I have switched to 7-zip which is 64 bit compatible. Even Comondo, Avira, Spybot, Imgburn, FF, Defreggler, and Ccleaner work fine.

I don't run winrar, but WinZip 11.2 opens .rar files just fine.

I use winrar on x64 just fine...what's the problem you were experiencing?

7zip 32 or 64 bit builds open rar, zip, 7z files and more just fine, and it's Free OSS.

Come on. This article is by far too sceptical over Vista x64 (unless your machine is 10 years old). I have two machines in heavy production work loaded with tons of software runnig just perfectly since the beginning. And yes... I also do not have any problem with DVDs ;-) ... Whats great is the performance with 8 gigs of RAM... Apps are starting in a snap because Vistas advanced memory caching. Have shown it to a Mac guy and his pants fall off :-D

Betanews writers operate on the assumption if they can get people to click on a biased and misleading story, then that means they can charge more for ads.

Get use to it. Most articles are designed to convey a little information but then start a flame war.

So whether you support Apples, MS, or open source, Lets not give Betanews the satisfaction of a flame war or clicking on stories that are clearly written to be a modern day "semi-Yellow" Journalism approach. :)

Have a nice day :)

I bit the bullet and went from Vista Ultimate x86 to x64. I have yet to run into any major (or that many minor for that matter) issues.

The only hiccup so far for me was that Adobe does not provide flash support for 64bit IE7. That is not Vista's fault though, and I did send a rather unfriendly email to Adobe asking them if they were aware that 64bit software has be available for quite a while, and if they were ever planning on getting with the times... Oh how I do miss Macromedia.

Both my gaming and media center stuffs are working w/o issue. Which are my primary uses for this machine.

However, I am presently having issue getting what have supposedly been 64-bit codecs to show up as a selection in WebGuide (the 32bit software I use to stream my live/recorded tv from Media Center.) Granted the default Microsoft ones seems to work fine, but I would prefer being able to tweak for the best stream quality possible.

You never will.
unless someone finds a way to write a wrapper, and thinks it's worth doing :

32bit apps can only access 32bit dll's and codecs.
64bit apps can only access 64bit dll's and codecs.

That is why flash does not run in ie7 x64.
MediaPlayer Classic Home Cinema v64 can play most video files, because it has 64 bit filters built in, maybe that can handle your streams. Otherwise you will have to install 32bit codecs for your 32bit software.

I like reading the comments on here proclaiming 32-bit dead and saying we should have been on 64-bit years, if not decades ago.

Or that The sole responsibility is on Driver makers. Nope, Microsoft (marketing) and consumers (lack of interest)are also partly to blame.

We aren't in a 64-bit world because of many issues:
a. Support costs are higher.
b. Many applications, plug-ins, setups simply don't work as expected.
c. It is expensive to rewrite drivers for such a small benefit.
d. For the majority of the desktop platforms out there, there isn't a need for 4+ gigs of RAM. Yes even with Vista, and most common desktop applications.

4-bit is great, those that need it migrated years ago, and it works fine. Those that don't need it would do best to stick with 32-bit for the meantime.

and out come the trolls and fanboys

...nobody cares

I feed on trolls and fanboys, i care.

lol so do i

consumers are finicky...as too are the hardware makers.
We should have already been well into 64bits since Digital's Alpha.

And it's never the OS makers responsibility for drivers, just in case some are still unaware.

Funky people who think drivers are not the responsibility of hardware makers are the ones keeping 64bit in the shadows. Come on ppl

You mean like Linux? Depends a little on the OS, doesn't it? :p

The problem for hardware manufacturers (particularly smaller ones) is that their drivers need to be verified and signed off on by Microsoft at great expense to themselves. If MS made the WHQL process easier and cheaper (or free) I know we would have a lot more 64bit support than we do.

...and crapier too... ;)

The need for 64-bit is clearly here. RAM is dirt cheap. Who wants to be stuck with 3 to 3.5GB of RAM?

Vista being resource heavy and bloatware is wrong. That perception is Microsoft's fault though. They let Vista be defined by the snake oil salesmen at Apple.

Using more memory is good in Vista's case. It is pre-caching. That's much quicker than getting code off the hard drive. What good is having a bunch of unused free RAM? Vista uses it to make the system faster.

This is exactly what I have been saying. Considering how many 64-bit Vista drivers are available I'm surprised that more midrange PC's don't have 8GB of RAM. The only powered hardware that would be cheaper than 8GB of RAM is the keyboard and mouse. Betanews makes the driver support in 64-bit Vista sound as bad as 64-bit XP.

the only thing that kept me from going 64bit on my MacBook Pro was the lack of 64bit BootCamp drivers from Apple. Until that happens, its 32bit Windows for me!

Well, apple supports Vista 64 for a long time now...

http://www.apple.com/sup...1forwindowsvista64.html

It's about time. During the Boot Camp beta testing period Apple said Boot Camp only supported 32-bit Vista.

I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't admit Vista was a mistake and come up with a way to compensate people who are stuck with it.

64 bits with no drivers or (64 bit) software is not going to help.

Two reasons:

1. It wasn't a mistake.
2. You're not stuck with it.

lol

Well arent you a retard. Your not stuck with it at all.

Honestly, Vista 32 never should have existed. Microsoft only created it to give people a shortcut on the upgrade path, but all its done is made life harder for people running Vista 64 (which is actually a far more stable version). Vista 32 is effectively Windows ME all over again, a pointless version that people get because the better version is slightly more work for the OEM.

People need 64 bit more then is commonly realized. Games in particular are already hitting the limits of 32 bit systems, hence "out of memory" errors popping up. Its not like they're really out of memory, they're just out of address space.

We've had 64 bit CPUs for years now. Getting the 64 bit OS in place is the next step, then the 64 bit apps can follow.

I'm also not sure what people are talking about when it comes to DVD-RW drivers. I didn't need to do any kind of advanced driver search. I stuck in a SATA burner, and it burns. I wasn't aware DVD-RW drives even came with drivers anymore.

The only DVD/CD drives that need drivers are SCSI ones and nearly every major SCSI adapter manufacturer has 64-bit drivers for Vista available. In most cases manufacturers have 64-bit Windows XP drivers too.

So wait, by saying vista 32 is basically Windows ME, you are saying that vista 64 offers a user experience which is different than that of vista 32, right? I fail to see any functional difference for Vista 32 and 64 minus the larger ram address space.

I bit the bullet and went 64 bit ultimate. Not too impressed. 64 bit IE = no flash. 32 bit = ok. Sound drivers suck on vista. period. try searching on "best sound card for vista". went from x-fi to using motherboards crap, doesnt matter read new eggs reviews of different boards. Most games are OK, get weird crash after playing TF2, and had to set some setting to get it to play at all. My advice? wait another year before jumping into 64 bit. Also funky issues with USB and flash rams. Just weird annoyances that should get cleared up over time, I hope. Usable though. Disclaimer: Got Vista free through MS, so I am not defending purchase like some zealots do.

See I dont know what your talking about. Im using Vista Ultimate 64 bit right now and havent had a single "issue" you have described like with the sound and usb flash drives.

64-bit has been working pleasantly here.

I'm running Vista 64 and I'm not having any issues with "lack of drivers" with anything I have. My DVD RW works fine.

Remember if your buying cheap crap hardware, it's cheap "crap" hardware.

I would be more concerned about PC makers and issues people are having with Vista (any flavor) compatibility.

Yah like my dvd burner in my other computer that burns dvds and then cant even read them. Piece of junk dvd burner. Dont buy no name brands! :P

well, i only had a few issues with vista and they were all on the 32 bit version. x64 runs great. the only pcs that i have that had issues were the one's i built, one with close to top of the line hardware and one with cheep hardware, both had driver issues in both 32 and 64 bit virsions. the rest that have for the most part main streem hardware haven't had an issue.

i belive that most issues in vista are cause by either the user or the hardware with poorly writen drivers.... why make new drivers when they just want you too buy their new products

Lack of support? I don't know what they are talking about.

I have some pretty archaic "Fry's Special" gadgets that have 64bit drivers. Sure most are beta but are there and work. Cheap no brand DVD Burners, cheap USB no brand wifi, HD TV tuner card, etc. All work fine along with my more mainstream hardware.

I play games, use apps, no issues. I wish more of the apps were 64b native so I could use my ram but the 32s run just fine. I can't wait for CS4, LR2 is most welcome as is. (both 64b native)

Not sure where all this fuss is coming from?

The whole DVD/RW bit is purely shoddy reporting, apparently from someone who knows next-to nothing about computer hardware.

Optical drives, far and wide, are run off of the IDE/SATA/w/e drivers and do not have their own bus drivers or proprietary hardware drivers.

Think about it. When was the last time you needed to "install" a driver for an optical device? Even on USB?

Jaq's trolling MSFT.

Again...

You have to wonder about the whole 64 vs 32 bit issue. Can anyone name a mainstream 64 bit application ? 32 bit apps running on a 64 bit OS tend to run slightly slower. Device drivers are only a part of the problem. VISTA is the REAL problem. As a 32 bit OS it can only address 4GB of RAM and that includes what comes on your video adapter that you were foreced to upgrade (if you could) to accommodate DX 10 and Vista's bloated kernel and eye candy... Hardware makers responded with high end motherboards that will take 8GB of RAM if you run the 64 bit OS, but when there are few applications or device drivers, who cares... Catch 22 folks !

How is that Vista's fault? It seems to me that it's a developers issue.

HAHAHA that 4 gig limit has nothing to do with microsoft. Its all with the architecture.

And I love how you make it like you have to spend a fortune on a video card for Vista. You kidding me? Im running Vista with an ATI 9800XT on one of my systems.

So, what this Microsoft guy is saying is that among people who actually use Vista, a large percentage are rapidly switching to 64-bit versions. All that tells me is that the technophiles who are determined to beat that piece of crap into working condition are using the most advanced version of it they can get for free. BTW, I gave the latest 32 bit Ultimate with all the latest drivers and updates another go yesterday. On my dual core AMD 5200 with top quality hardware, it installed smoothly and seemed to be working pretty good as I loaded drivers and tweaked settings. Then I actually started trying to run apps. It began to self-destruct in the most spectacular fashion, topping all previous meltdowns I've witnessed. My friend the OS guru who actually runs Vista32 witnessed it and came to the conclusion that his fairly stable install is "a one-in-a-thousand lucky break". I'm back to XP Pro w/SP-3 and couldn't be happier. For me, Vista = FAIL, case closed.

I run Vista 64 bit on my desktop, I have ran the 32 bit and believe that I like the 64 bit better. I don't completely like either, and took my laptop from Vista 32, to XP Pro.

It is not possible to use Vista 64-bit because of enforced-and-almost-undisableable driver sign check. Even if manufacturers will suddenly start producing Vista-64 drivers for any hardware they sell, it would not be enough.

But... there are drivers out there - lots of them - for Vista 64-bit. So why can't the other guys make drivers for their hardware? It's definitely possible. I've seen it with my own eyes. =p

p.s. "undisableable" wins the award for most interesting word I've seen all week.

Needs more cowbell...

Yes it is possible to use it as thousands of people are doing that just right now (Hey, ma look out the Windows its one of those Vista 64 bit thingamajigers!)

You need to be specific on what it doesn't work on as it sounds like you are just trolling and use the tired excuses everyone else does.

I have no idea what your talking about. They are out there.

No, Vista 64-bit is not ready for mainstream.

The real test to see if something is ready for mainstream is whether PC manufacturers start releasing it en masse. I've seen a few name brand PCs configured with 64-bit on them, but very few.

The lack of DVD+/-RW support is perhaps the biggest problem, as the article says. Once the demand for apps that use more than 4GB increases then I'm guessing more hardware manufacturers will finally get their act together. It's sad, really, in that this isn't as much Microsoft's fault as it is hardware manufacturer's faults. Then again, if there is no demand, why should they bother?

They should definately take note of the percentages though. Demand for 64-bit can only go up from here.

There is no lack of DVD+/-RW support. You are completely misinformed.

From the article: But (Chris Flores) acknowledges that, even now, few if any 64-drivers are available for some categories of consumer products, including DVD/RW devices.

I worded my comment badly. I meant that many DVD+/-RW drives do not have working drivers. I know mine didn't work properly--then again last I used Vista 64-bit on my home machine was with RC2...

DVD burners use the standard IDE or AHCI driver that Vista includes. If a device doesn't work with these drivers in 64-bit Vista then it is strictly a hardware problem. Most likely a serious firmware bug.

Most businesses check the demand first and then decide investments. Microsoft follows the opposite way: they decide the investment and afterwards make all in their might to create a demand. It has worked well until XP, but IMO is a very risky way of doing things. Even when there are a lot of people who buy anything new only because it is new, big corporations and all governements of the world, which are their most important customers, think twice before spending a dollar and only buy when it pays.

I wish I could have worded it as well as you could. To some extent, that is why third-party software had so many compatability problems with Vista early on.

Searching in my memory for a precedent of this way of planning, I hardly found only one: the Concorde plane. The fastest of them all...now lies in a museum.

Nothing like being caught in a lie.

Drivers, drive4s, where are the drivers.

Having just gone 53bit on both my work Vista desktop and my home XP64 desktop (infinitely preferable), i can attest to the paucity of drivers, particularly for peripherals like sound cards and printers.

A 64bit OS is the red-headed stepchild of the OS community - and will remain so for a while yet. That being said, the speed gain and enhanced memory management are very tangible gains - but not yet mainstream, primarily because of...

You guessed it...

DRIVERS!

Oh, and one more thing:

Because Vista is such a miserable resource hog with little to show for what it consumes in terms of tangible benefits over XP, if you're running that OS you absolutely should run the 64bit version - if only to be able to address enough memory to use it in a half decent fashion (may God have mercy on you if you're running the Office 2007 garbage - you're up to needing 6Gb at that point, which is just an obscenity).

As an example, my XP64 box uses 500Mb fully configured and sitting idle.

Vista64 Enterprise in a similar state uses over 1Gb.

Neither have Office 2007 installed.

...drive4s... ...Having just gone 53bit...

You need to slow down your typing and make sure your fingers are where you think they are. =p

It's hard to argue against your reasoning because you don't give any examples of hard-ware that doesn't work. When you just give a category, that could be from any company. You do realize it's the hardware manufacturer's responsibility to write the drivers, right? Not Microsoft's.

As long as you stick to mainstream companies, or, alternatively, read the darn label to see if they have drivers for your OS, everything should work just fine. Everyone's gotten so used to the mentality that everything will work on their OS (XP) that they've forgotten there are such things as system requirements.

I have a lot, a whole lot, of hardware connected to my 64-bit Vista PC, and I haven't had any driver issues yet. None what-so-ever. Maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones. Or maybe it's because I do my research before buying.

(may God have mercy on you if you're running the Office 2007 garbage - you're up to needing 6Gb at that point, which is just an obscenity).

I'll focus on this point since it's the most outrageous of your points. I use Office 2007 and have had Word, Excel, Outlook, Access, and Publisher open at the same time, and did not exceed 2GB. I don't know what the crap you have on your PC, but unless you have a 1 gigabyte normal.dotx file, 4,000 open Word documents or your entire photo album pasted into a Word document, I don't know how you can possibly be using 6GB of RAM using Office 2007.

Most likely you were over exaggerating, but that's a little over the top, eh?

Not really.

A friend of mine is doing his MBA at Queen's (they've standardized on Office 2007 there) and he's the one who brought this to my attention. Things slow down noticeably when you have the full suite active unless you add RAM. It ain't the processor because that's a 6000+ Dual Core.

None of the other points are far-fetched or even remotely outrageous either. A nice sexy 3D interface isn't a benefit (in fact the WORST aspect of Vista, right after the not-so-subtle kiss-ass to DRM is the entire UI) and while moving drivers out of the kernel is, the rest of the package stacks the minuses far above the pluses.

The resource bloat sucks a machine's will to live compared to XP64.

Wish I could - I lately became visually impaired and it's a b****. :)

The hardware is more or less iterated in another post:

Athlon 6000+ AM2 (the Athlon line handles multitasking noticeably better than the Intel stuff - Northbridge on chip REALLY helps) / 4Gb RAM / twin Seagate Barracida ES 500Gb drives / ATI X1950GT w/512Mb / Asus Xonar DX PCI-E.

Nice, generic, fast kit - not HP or Dell proprietary fodder (as an example of the HP rubbish, finding the Simple PCI Communications Controller was a b**** - it ended up being Intel's management beastie and not at all on the HP site).

All that being said, I'm very happy with my XP64 experience - and chuckle every time I use the noticeably slower Vista counterpart (when I'm not snorting with impatience at the slow UI).

I dont buy that for a second. You or your friend must be doing something wrong.
I run so many office 2007 apps along with a ticketing system and a couple dozen absent-mindedly opened browser windows that my taskbar looks like a train accident. On a core2duo 2.33 with 4gb (er 3.5 or whatever) 800mhz ram with vista 32 and I never see hesitation or "noticable" slowing. I restart once every couple of weeks. It works great. I cant wait to try out 64 bit on my other machine.

Then don't.

The Vista UI is pokey to begin with, disk access is slightly (an improvement due to SP1) slower than XP's and like it or not, Office is indeed a pig.

Word One why I've been running OpenOffice for the last four years.

What is, Is.

Perhaps your expectations of performance are different form mine.

I like a snappy interface and quick response.

YMMV - but then again it must since you ARE running Vista.

In some years 64 bits OS will be a must.
Now, except for some small exceptions, there is no need for 64bits windows for 97% of the users who uses 4gb or less RAM.
Servers are a different story, but there is no need for Vista or XP 64bits now.
Running 32bits applications in a 64bits OS is a waste of resources; and small 64 bits applications uses almost twice as RAM as 32bits alternatives.

Another probe you cannot trust what Microsoft argue.

I beg to differ. While I agree there may not be a "need" to run 64-bit windows for most people, every computer they've bought for the past 2 years has been 64-bit capable.

The performance gains alone (from switching to 64-bit Vista) are astounding. So I would argue that since people have the processing power that's simply going to waste in a 32-bit OS, and they have so much performance to gain, why shouldn't they switch?

I think windows figured out how to push everyone into a 64-bit OS. Make the OS require at least 4GB of RAM. =p

I use Vista Ultimate 64-bit myself, and I'm actually, surprisingly, very pleased with it. I haven't had any driver or software compatibility issues with it yet, except installing Adobe CS2, but I was able to find a work-around, and everything runs fine now.

Yeah, joking aside about the memory requirements, Vista 64 boots up in under a minute (Vista 32 took about 3-5 minutes on the same machine), has a lot less disk thrashing (which I'm guessing means it indexes a lot faster and more efficiently than Vista 32) and is pretty rock solid and has no file copy speed issues.

So far it's not been driver issues so much as getting 64 bit codecs working on it, 64 bit Flash support within Vista Media Center, and waiting on people to re-write all their 32 bit Media Center apps for the 64 bit version.

Vista64 Enterprise on my Core Duo 4Gb box thrashes mercilessly for about three or four minutes before realizing that it's actually running and should stop flogging the horse.

We won't discuss Vista32. :) :) ;)

I'm using Vista 64 Ultimate. We had major issues at work when testing Vista Enterprise which is why I haven't brought it home with me and went with the MSDN Ultimate version.

Heh, can't vouch for Enterprise. Poor horse...

Wha...?

Enterprise is nothing more than Ultimate with the useless crap stripped away. It's also noticeably more sprightly than Ultimate (Ultimate Pig if you ask me).

No issues with Enterprise here other than the obvious resource hogging which is native to all Vistas.

I mean, I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about skewering that OS as a rule, but I haven't had any obnoxiousness with Enterprise.

What weirdness have you encountered?

TarrantM - can you please be specific about the problems you had? We use Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate (all 32bit Vista) within our worldwide business - 5000+ PCs, 1000 of those are already on Vista.

We use Server 2003 and we are already starting to roll out Server 2008 (which during our testing and preparations has proven to us that we can reduce the number of servers we have).

We have not had a single issue with Vista - none at all. No network issues, no driver issues, no nothings.

Its a pure dream to roll out compared to XP as well, Vista is so much easier to roll out to 100+ at a time, MUCH easier than XP ever was.

We are doing fresh installations over XP, so its the same "old" hardware that XP ran on.

Obviously, we investigated the hardware we use, obtained the latest drivers for the Vista image, etc. Yes, we did preparation work before hand.

roj - when you say "obvious resource hogging" where are you getting your technical information to base this "supposed" fact from?

What are you looking at? disk space? cpu loading? averaged cpu loading? ram usage? average ram usage?

I have been running Vista Ultimate 64bit for a year or so now. I found that 64bit Vista is a much more solid, stable OS for my uses. I believe that the driver issue has improved ten fold during the last year and so have no issues personally. In fact the only (minor) issue I have encountered up to now is there is the occasional software title is not compatible. This happens, for me at least, less often than before. I have no issues playing games or running communication software. Personally, Vista 64bit is far more reliable than the 32bit versions. I personally see no speed increase for the most part although multi-threading appears to be smoother. Memory, rescource usage I would say is about the same regardless of 32 or 64 bit Vista. I would say that it will not be too long before 64bit Vista is ready for the mainstream of PC users.

Contrast the response of the UI with all the eye candy turned OFF with the same situation under XP, again with all the eye candy turned OFF. The Vista UI is noticeably slower. Better yet, to hammer the point home, try both with Windows magnifier running (it's built into the OS for Accessibility). Even M$ engineers have remarked "MAN, that's SLOW - why is that?". Hell, if THEY don't know...

Next, contrast the RAM usage on startup with no apps running other than the video card "helper" application (be it nVidia or ATI) under XP64 and Vista64. One is exactly half of the other (500Mb vs. 1Gb).

Neither OS has done anything yet.

1Gb to say "Hi"?

Where I come form that smells, tastes, looks like and feels like...

...oh, I don't know...

...Resource Hogging.

With no benefit to speak of.

YMMV.

I'll definitely agree that the 64bit version is more reliable but that's to be expected because the OS was designed for a platform that can address the large amounts of memory it needs to do anything.

Let's see, the OS needs 1Gb to say "hi". The app address space on 32bit is what again? Yeah. Right. So that means the OS has scarfed 1Gb and the remaining chump change of the 3.2Gb or so that can be addressed has to run anything / everything else and load data into the bargain.

Bad situation already and we're only at "hi".

DO NOT disable the superfetch service, that internet tweak is wrong, but superfetch for applications can cause thrashing. I and many others found it works much better with superfetch off once windows is loaded (and let the normal cacheing/prefetch run, and only superfetch for boot). The registry setting for superfetch should be set to 2 and prefetch set to 3 for best performance. Again, DO NOT disable the superfetch service, as that kills of normal prefetch, etc etc!

Contrast the response of the UI with all the eye candy turned OFF with the same situation under XP, again with all the eye candy turned OFF.

Genius. ..and proof you've not a clue about hwo Vista handles GUI resources.

Turning the "eye candy" off in Vista disabled DWM, and reverts back to GDI. On a system that has the available video memory and GPU power, AERO (DWM) *will* run faster than GDI. GDI was not optimized in Vista for that very reason. It is outdated.

Next, contrast the RAM usage on startup with no apps running other than the video card "helper" application (be it nVidia or ATI) under XP64 and Vista64. One is exactly half of the other (500Mb vs. 1Gb).

So you're saying Vista utilizes the available resources instead of letting them sit idle?