OK, so this is not actually production related in the strictest sense but I trust people here.

I've got an asus laptop for general business use (not audio) that was originally a vista specific machine (right before win7 came out) so I got rid of Shista and put XP on it.

I beat the thing to hell with a million programs and I'm getting the blue screen of death every so often.

I don't believe in repairing XP (prefer fresh installs of OS in such cases for a multiude of reasons), but I'm going to go win7 (I know it can be done on this laptop and the drivers are available etc).

It's go a core 2 duo (1.8ghz) and 2gig of ram, and serves it's purpose nicely.

Just not sure if I should go 64 or 32bit?

Anyone got any pros or cons etc?

Since you only have 2GB of memory to work with, I'd just go 32bit unless there is a pressing need to run 64bit applications. You can always go 64bit to see how it functions and just switch back to 32bit if things get wacky. In either case, I think you would greatly benefit from more RAM. 2 GB will run Win7, but the performance might be rather sluggish.

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quote:

Originally posted by Magnus Since you only have 2GB of memory to work with, I'd just go 32bit unless there is a pressing need to run 64bit applications. You can always go 64bit to see how it functions and just switch back to 32bit if things get wacky. In either case, I think you would greatly benefit from more RAM. 2 GB will run Win7, but the performance might be rather sluggish.

Thanks mate!

I'm going to try out 64b and then maybe get some more ram, but if it sucks the life from it, I'll downgrade to 32b.

Always just go 64 bit if you can. If you have more than 4 gigs of ram, it will automatically use more ram. I forgot how much more ram, but I remember theoretically something up to several million gigs of ram. Windows 64 bit only supports up to 128 gigs of ram though.

However, a lot of DAW's don't have full 64 bit functionality. FLStudio for example, only allows you to use up to 4 gigs of ram (which is more than enough for me right now).

I'd install 64-bit because it isn't more CPU intensive, and when you decide to go with more ram, you won't have to reinstall everything. You technically don't need it, but it doesn't hurt you and it is a pain in the future if you choose to upgrade with more ram and with 64-bit applications.

ableton live also 32bit at the moment

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Originally posted by Zombie0729 ableton live also 32bit at the moment

this is the most annoying thing about ableton, alway in the final stages of the project starts crashing on me, they realy should implement the 64bit support otherwise they will lose alot of users including me

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Keep XP given the weak processor and small RAM. Buy a new computer if you really want win 7 IMO. Unless you're getting 4 gigs of ram there's no point in 64 bit anyway, and I don't see the point of wasting money on RAM for such an underpowered computer.

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The 64 bit version of 7 will actually use more RAM than the 32 bit version so you really do need that extra bit of RAM anyway
Great os tho

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there is much more to the x86-64 architecture than just larger physical address space.

i'd say go for 64-bit ubuntu, since you arent using it for music production. you can get pretty much anything running on WINE, and if not, there is always free alternative software to get.

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Last edited by itsamemario on Apr-30-2011 at 12:57

Thanks for the responses guys.

Unfortunately XP is not an option anymore as it was specifically a vista laptop, and even though I managed to get XP to sit on it, it was never perfect and there's no known fixes for the driver compatibility issues.

I really don't want to start fucking with ubuntu as it's just meant ot be a general work machine, so I'll try W7 64b and if it freaks out, otherwise back to 32b.

Thanks again people!

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Originally posted by DJ RANN I really don't want to start fucking with ubuntu as it's just meant ot be a general work machine, so I'll try W7 64b and if it freaks out, otherwise back to 32b.

Haha, there's no fucking when it comes to Ubuntu. I've been running it for nearly half a year soon, and I've still yet to see anything resembling the hell that is blue screens.

I mostly watch movies, download music and surf on this machine, and everything just works out of the box. As of two hours ago I am running the new release (Natty Narwhal) and they have replaced OpenOffice (which worked well) with LibreOffice (a fork of OpenOffice) and it also seems to be working very well and it's also compatible with other major office suites.

I recommend that you download an ubuntu live cd and try it out. You don't even have to install it, just run it off a USB drive! That's what I did, it took me less than 15 minutes to decide that this was going onto my machine! :P

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download

Click it. You know you want to.

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Oh, and there is no such thing as a "specifically a vista laptop". THat's just something Asus is being paid by M$ to say

My laptop is also an Asus by the way.

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