Windows XP 32-bit or 64-bit?

Steffano2002

Good morning,

I bought my sister a laptop for her birthday. It is a Dell 1501 with a AMD Turion 64 X2 TL50 (1.6GHz, 256K).

This laptop will have Vista pre-installed so I will be formatting it straight away with Windows XP. However, I started thinking about the fact that this processor was a dual core (64-bit) processor and I was wondering if I was better off formatting using Windows XP 64-bit (I have both the 32 and 64-bit versions).

Is this correct? Will this dual core laptop work better/faster with Windows XP 64-bit?
Was Windows XP 64-bit just an experiment or does it actually work as well as Windows XP 32-bit?
Am I better off sticking to the normal 32-bit version?

Thank you for your help!

ondafly

i had to setup some AV software on one of these 1501 laptops recently, it had the AMD Turion 64 sticker on it too. However it came preinstalled with XP 32bit from Dell.

In my experience using 64bit XP, there was some minor difficulties getting work related products running - however, this probably wouldn't be an issue for a home user.

NutJob

As a home user i doubt youd notice any difference.

Only issue is drivers for older hardware.

WizZard

Unless you have need for X64, i.e. have more than 2GB of RAM in the laptop, I'd advise you to stick with 32-bit XP.

Some drivers still don't, and won't ever, work with 64-bit windows.

Steffano2002

All three of you have convinced me! I am now installing Windows XP 32-bit!

FYI: Had a quick go at Vista before formatting and it took 9 minutes before I got to the desktop. Shocking! Anyway, bye bye Vista!

Ginger

Remember to install the update for Turion processors for Windows XP..

Was the vista time from the first ever run??? Or had it settled down? 20 seconds is what it takes normally from power on to use the desktop on any laptop i have used it on

unkel

Steffano2002 wrote:

This laptop will have Vista pre-installed so I will be formatting it straight away with Windows XP

Why would you do that? :eek:

Vista boots up quicker on decent hardware than XP. Apart from the lack of drivers for some older hardware and the occasional issue, I feel there's little wrong with Vista even at this early stage

chrislad

Steffano2002 wrote:

All three of you have convinced me! I am now installing Windows XP 32-bit!

FYI: Had a quick go at Vista before formatting and it took 9 minutes before I got to the desktop. Shocking! Anyway, bye bye Vista!

That happens the first time. Either that or you got a crappy laptop.

Personally, I feel Vista runs way faster on my PC than XP.

seamus

Em, why would you just dump a Vista licence? It's actually a good OS, just still has a few creases and is unfamiliar. Otherwise it's fine. Speed is fine. I did give out about the beta being slow a while back, but that was only on the first two boots. I logged into it again last week and it was flying along.

Steffano2002

Jeepers! Stopped looking at this thread right after making the decision to format!

Why not use Vista? Because once I give this laptop to my sister my phone will be ringing off the hook and she'll be asking me "how do you do that?" and "what does that mean?" and I'm not familiar with Vista at all... Oh, and Comodo Firewall doesn't work with Vista IIRC.

Furthermore, this laptop is a little bit low spec and Vista running on 1024MB of RAM isn't ideal...

Funny enough, a friend of mine in work got himself a top-of-the-range HP laptop for college with Vista Premium on it and he hated it. It was really slow (he used Visual Studio .Net and all that)! It took him 30 minutes just to install Office XP! :eek: So he formatted his laptop also and installed XP...

Might go with Vista (which I actually have on DVD) but only when proper drivers are out for everything (especially graphics) and when Comodo Firewall works on it.

unkel

Steffano2002 wrote:

this laptop is a little bit low spec and Vista running on 1024MB of RAM isn't ideal...

A gig of RAM is fine for Vista for use on a laptop for the vast majority of people

Ginger

VS 2003 is not supported on Vista but it can be made work with some hammers and a bit of luck. 2005 is supported. I will be getting a new laptop (a toshiba monster with 2G of RAM, 512Mb GFX and 200GB hard disk) from work to test Vista on as a developer. We are getting a couple and giving them to the different business aspects so that we can get feedback as to what are the problems people encounter and how to solve them.

Steffano I think you made the right choice, as you will be the first point of support and contact it will be a nightmare :P

Steffano2002

Ginger wrote:

Steffano I think you made the right choice, as you will be the first point of support and contact it will be a nightmare :P

It will be a nightmare alright... And she won't have the interweb at first so no remote assistance either. Looking forward to it!