I must admit I am really surprised by the result of this poll. Two-thirds of my readers prefer Vista x64 to Vista x86. More than 1000 of you took part in this poll. If you believe in the validity of this data, you must come to the conclusion that the transition to 64 Bit is already underway on desktops. However, it is a matter of fact that 4sysops readers are not typical computer users. Obviously, the majority of my readers are more tech savvy than the average computer user, and therefore more open to technological changes.
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I intentionally asked, “What is your choice?” because I wanted to know what I will install on my next laptop. Well, I would say that this has been a clear vote. I was unsure, because I know that if you move away too far from the beaten path, you easily run into time-consuming problems. But as things stand, at least among IT pros, Vista x64 is the most common choice.
However, these numbers do not say much about the situation in corporate networks, in my opinion. The question of whether it makes sense to deploy Vista x64 in a corporate network depends on many factors. In my organization, we will only deploy Vista x86 because we want to limit the number of problems potentially caused by the transition from Windows XP to Vista. If you are new to my blog, you might want to check out my series about the 64 bit vs. 32 bit topic. German speaking readers might be interested in my article that was published recently at the German magazine Computerwoche.
I’m now running Vista Ultimate 64bit at home and 64bit Vista Business at the office, one of the drawbacks I’ve seen thus far is the vendors of some prodcuts do not bother to get signed drivers for 64bit, which makes running some big brand hardware very difficult, I’ve had to make some modifications to my work system to get a big brand eSata card to work on x64 Vista.
Performance wise 64bit is just awesome, being able to take advantage of 4GB+ memory is fantastic, the ability to run mutiple VM’s at home and work is a godsend of 64bit, couple that with the eSata abilities on new motherboard and disk IO is almost a thing of the past.
I have a similar situation.
I have Window Server 2008 at home that soon will have hyper-V installed on it. With the low cost of RAM and quad-core processors, I can turn a single machine into 4 servers with a dedicated 2.5 GHz+ cpu and 2GB RAM for a much lower cost than building 4 machines with (especially when you consider the additional licensing costs).
For my Vista Ultimate, I also chose Ultimate x64 – it serves as my multimedia PC as well as hosting a couple of VMWare images (for testing and backwards compatibility). Combined with my server, I have a complete computer lab to experiment with.
I chose the TX2120US for my Tablet PC because Vista’s inking is far superior to XP Tablet PC edition. It comes with Vists Home Premium x64 and 4GB RAM. Although I think I would have been better of with Toshiba’s tablet, cost was a factor in this purchase. However, due to some compatibility issues, I knew I wanted to be able to run a VMWare image on my mobile computer.
Really, I only recommend Vista for 2 groups of people: gamers who have to have DX10 and those who will need to run VMWare images. I don’t recommend x64 yet for the former because of compatibility issues (which is mainly a burden 3rd party vendors have failed to pick up), but for the latter the extra RAM is essential (especially if you are using Windows Server 2008).
Is Vista ready for enterprise use? 32 bit, probably not – 64 bit, definitely not.
Ryan, that is interesting. What eSata card is this? I also have an eSata card and I hope I will be able to use it after I move to 64 bit.
MDillenbeck, you have quite a few Vista machines for someone who says that Vista is not ready. 😉
It was an Adaptec 1225SA, and to get it to work on Vista x64 SP1, I needed to put Vista into ‘Test mode’ and self sign the adaptec driver so that it would install. Its a process that isnt documented in very many places. Disabling driver signing is nigh on impossible with SP1 at bootup, so signing the driver to get it to install was the answer. I used this program: http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=dseo to sign the Adaptec driver.
Unfortunately, Marvell does not have the new drivers for the 64-bit version of Vista. So now I am off to download the x86 (32-bit) version of Vista RC1. The download is going slow (about 100KB/sec) and it says it will take about 7-8 hours. Normally it takes about 1-1/2 hours for a Vista download. I guess a lot of people are downloading.
Anyway, I will have Vista RC1 x86 installed this weekend. I already downloaded the Marvell drivers (9.10.2.2) from their web site.
Vista RC1 .. that made me chuckle, here.
I’d like to say that ever since SP1 launched for Vista, many OEM’s are pushing 64-bit systems at the retail level. It initially started with HP notebooks only, but now it’s present in HP, Dell, Gateway Desktops and Notebooks.
64bit is on the rise.
Just bought a new machine, ordered it with Vista Home Premium x64. So far no issues, application compatibility has been 100%, with all the x86 apps I’ve had to use (no 64 bit version for a lot of them), but my first challenge might come in a few weeks when I purchase some hardware, and have to check that there are 64 bit drivers.