HI,
I am running Vista 32 on my home built computer. This is a complicated machine and system which oversees a digital darkroom as well as being used for conventional computing. I have many peripherals including three printers, dual color calibrated LCD's, a Wacom graphics tablet, a negative film scanner, a flat bed scanner, a wireless network with two additional computers, and more. The machine runs with RAID 1 drives and with additional external hard disks (non-RAID). As I said, it's a complicated system.
When getting this system up and running I had major problems with drivers. Vista found drivers for the more conventional peripherals but I had to find and download many others. They did not always work. I also had problems with some programs that had worked fine with XP. Nero Burning ROM is one example. The system is now running well and I am happy. Once I got everything installed I have never experienced a Blue Screen of Death or a frozen computer. Reliability has been 100%. As I have said before here, I like Vista a lot and I think I made the right decision when I decided against XP. But this build required some real work.
I researched the 64 bit issue prior to building the machine. What I found convinced me that the world is not quite ready for Vista 64 bit. For that matter, one could say that the world is not quite ready for Vista of any description. I knew what some of my more memory intensive applications required (memory hog Photoshop CS3, for example) and knew I did not need more than 4gB's of dual channel memory for fast and efficient operation. I could not see any reason to complicate my life with 64 bits. Not yet.
Mainly, I am not a computer hobbist though I work with and on computers daily. My machine is a tool to get other work done. I have no love of fiddling around with the computer when I could be working on the things that need my time.
There is no question the world is moving in the 64 bit direction. In the future 32 bit machines and programs will just be a foggy memory just like 16 bit machines are now. And this will be good. Computers will continue to get better and faster. 64 bit machines is a train that will not be stopped. But my needs are now, not in the future. I fully expect that my next computer will be 64 bit.
BTW, I bought Vista Ultimate which comes with both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions. So my decision was based solely on the practical aspects of the issue.
Sparky
