Windows 7 (32bit or 64bit)?

Got a shopping cart of parts that you want opinions on? Get advice from members on your planned or existing system (or upgrade).

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Shamgar
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Post by Shamgar » Wed Nov 11, 2009 10:57 am

RoGuE wrote:
Shamgar wrote:
I decided that if I'm going to make the big change to Win7, I may as well buy the full retail version rather than the upgrade or OEM one. Probably spending more than I need to but just happier if I do it that way.
WHOA WHOA WHOA...hold up there, speedy. The "upgrade" software is still the FULL version, it just means you have to have a windows liscense already! Do you have XP or Vista? Then doing a clean install of the OS will replace it, and you can no longer use that liscense.

The upgrade is the FULL version of the software though. It just means you need to be using windows already. Not linux or OSx
I know the "upgrade" contains the "full" version. The reason I want to get the full retail version is because I have inherited the XP license from someone else. And I'm currently running my nLited install of it. I'm tired of constantly messing around with XP not knowing how stable it's going to be in a few months time, so I want to start off on a proper clean slate. I would like to get my own personal licence along with my own new system I will build up next year (when I have the time and money to do it).

I've rechecked local pricing here and they've come down already. The difference between the upgrade and full is fairly minimal. So is it between the Professional and Ultimate.

From my understanding, the upgrade version still requires a full reinstall anyway. I don't have a problem with that, as I've reformatted and reinstalled Windows more times than I care to remember over the years. It's a tedious process but it's often necessary. Hopefully, it will be less so with 7.

RoGuE
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Post by RoGuE » Wed Nov 11, 2009 11:31 am

Shamgar wrote:\ It's a tedious process but it's often necessary. Hopefully, it will be less so with 7.
It is much less tedious to install win 7. Also, one of the things I love most about it is it comes with a built in system imaging tool. You can create an image of your primary drive, save it to another partition, and then create a boot cd that basically will tell your computer to copy over the saved image to your broken primary drive.

Neat stuff.

Ksanderash
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Post by Ksanderash » Wed Nov 11, 2009 11:50 am

If anyone is interested, there is a possibility to add 4Gb RAM support (and more, up to 128Gb) in your 32-bit Windows 7 by patching a specific system file.

You need the ReadyFor4GB project (by the author of TCP-Z app). Use google to find it. If you ask me, does it really works -- yes, it does, I have full 2 x 2Gb RAM space available.

So no need to mess up with 64-bit (drivers, apps, compatibility), if you only want to bring up that lost half of a gigabyte RAM slice.
Last edited by Ksanderash on Thu Nov 12, 2009 9:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

derekva
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Post by derekva » Wed Nov 11, 2009 12:09 pm

Shamgar wrote:Getting 64bit Windows seems like the way to go although that road still appears treacherous for many users including myself. Looks like I may just stick to 32bit XP for now. Plus Win7 is still way too expensive in my part of the world for the retail versions. It's quite laugable really that you have to spend that much for an OS. I think Microsoft is asking the world to subsidise the losses it made on Vista. Smart financial folks they are. Got to give them some credit.
Not treacherous at all. Win7 is a huge improvement over Vista (which really was quite improved by SP1 / SP2) and the 64-bit version is extremely stable. I'm running 64-bit Windows on my desktop machine as well as one of my Media Center systems. It's rock-solid and I've not had any driver issues or program incompatability issues yet. However, as with pretty much everything these days, YMMV.

-D

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Post by RoGuE » Wed Nov 11, 2009 2:34 pm

Ksanderash wrote:If anyone is interested, there is a possibility to add 4Gb RAM support (and more, up to 128Gb) in your 32-bit Windows 7 by patching a specific system file.
This is completely false. A 32-bit OS can not address more than 4gb (in fact it's more like 3.5). If you want to use more ram than that, the only way to do it is to install a 64-bit OS and have a 64 bit processor ( most made within the last few years are)

Shamgar
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Post by Shamgar » Wed Nov 11, 2009 11:03 pm

Okay, the only thing(s) that is stopping me from going 64-bit is no compatible drivers for my modem, printer and mouse. Sure, eventually, I will replace them with new gear that has the "Compatible with Windows 7" logo, meaning 64-bit is supported out of the box. The modem and printer will inevitably get upgraded one day and will probably have 64-bit vendor or MS certified drivers available. But, alas, my mouse is a non-mainstream ergonomic model and the manufacturer has no sign of releasing 64-bit drivers anytime soon, or ever.

If you're your own system builder (which a lot of us here are) and you're hanging onto some older hardware like I am, it's not as straightforward. :(
RoGuE wrote:It is much less tedious to install win 7. Also, one of the things I love most about it is it comes with a built in system imaging tool. You can create an image of your primary drive, save it to another partition, and then create a boot cd that basically will tell your computer to copy over the saved image to your broken primary drive.

Neat stuff.
Yes, it does look quite neat. It may probably do away with the need to install a third party app or pay for an expensive one. Although some "power users" may still want to do that.

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Post by Monkeh16 » Thu Nov 12, 2009 5:25 am

RoGuE wrote:
Ksanderash wrote:If anyone is interested, there is a possibility to add 4Gb RAM support (and more, up to 128Gb) in your 32-bit Windows 7 by patching a specific system file.
This is completely false. A 32-bit OS can not address more than 4gb (in fact it's more like 3.5). If you want to use more ram than that, the only way to do it is to install a 64-bit OS and have a 64 bit processor ( most made within the last few years are)
Please, do some research before you say things like that. A 32-bit OS on an x86 processor supporting PAE (that's.. almost everything) can address up to 64GB of RAM. The 128GB claim is crap (unless they're running a 64-bit kernel on a 32-bit userland, and such a hybrid project is extremely unlikely), but 64GB is certainly possible, and allowing use of all 4GB of physical memory is easy.

Ksanderash
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Post by Ksanderash » Thu Nov 12, 2009 9:53 am

RoGuE wrote:This is completely false. A 32-bit OS can not address more than 4gb (in fact it's more like 3.5).
OK. Will you believe if I'll post some screens? :roll: I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate x86, 2 x 2Gb RAM is installed, screens are taken after applying the patch.

Image Image Image Image

How it can be true? See here for details.

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Post by RoGuE » Thu Nov 12, 2009 4:24 pm

well..I stand corrected. I could have sworn I remember reading an article as to why a 32-bit OS can't address more than 4gb by it's own nature..but I guess I was miss informed.

That said, aren't 64-bit OS's better for working with large files? (the only practical reason you would want more than 4gb of ram in the first place).
Microsoft wrote:The 64-bit version of Windows handles large amounts of random access memory (RAM) more effectively than a 32-bit system
This alone seals the deal for me. Why force more memory on a 32bit OS when you could just own x64? Old drivers? Old apps? These 2 problems really arn't that much of an issue anymore...most drivers can be found in 64bit versions! And most apps are at least 32bit based...which works fine on a 64bit system.

Reference = http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/wind ... -questions

Ksanderash
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Post by Ksanderash » Thu Nov 12, 2009 5:41 pm

RoGuE wrote:Why force more memory on a 32bit OS when you could just own x64?
Well, the future is with 64-bit systems, precisely. The next M$' OS will be 64-bit only. But now the situation is quite ambiguous: the 32-bit code (most of existing apps) is being executed a bit slower on 64-bit systems; the 64-bit OS (and the 64-bit apps' code too) occupies more space in RAM, up to twice as much; drivers -- many people still have heaps of hardware under 32-bit drivers, and they very likely won't see 64-bit versions.

The PAE is just a hack, actually. Yeah, official M$ hack. A trick to dodge the limitation. It's even slightly tardy, due to addresses translate. Not noticeable though in common tasks.
The 64-bit version of Windows handles large amounts of random access memory (RAM) more effectively than a 32-bit system
And M$ is right stating this. The general recommendation can be the following: if you have more than 4Gb RAM (6, 8, more) -- think about going into 64-bit system, it will be faster under certain conditions. If your RAM amount is 2Gb or less -- you won't derive not a one benefit from the 64-bit calculations. With a 4Gb -- can dispute about, does it worth or not the 64-bit play.

P.S. I've expressed my own opinion :)

Monkeh16
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Post by Monkeh16 » Thu Nov 12, 2009 6:10 pm

Ksanderash wrote:If your RAM amount is 2Gb or less -- you won't derive not a one benefit from the 64-bit calculations.
.. Yeah you will. You still gain registers, which make things generally easier and faster.

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Post by Ksanderash » Fri Nov 13, 2009 4:13 am

Monkeh16 wrote:You still gain registers, which make things generally easier and faster.
Registers? What registers? :P What for do I need them being an ordinary Windows user, not a scientist, or programmer, or something.

I just wanna run games and Photoshop. Yes, here I can encounter with the most crucial benefit of 64-bit -- lots of adressable RAM, but my Photoshop and games runs pretty smooth so I let pass yet another 64-bit migration possibility :)

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Post by jhhoffma » Fri Nov 13, 2009 7:27 am

That patch was just to make Windows recognize that there was additional RAM there. It still isn't a true access to all available RAM, as individual applications aren't capable of addressing more than 2GB each.

Bottom line: if you NEED 4GB of RAM, go 64-bit and upgrade the hardware you need to to get proper support.

I've never run into a situation that I've run out of RAM with 2GB, but then again I don't Photoshop...

Monkeh16
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Post by Monkeh16 » Fri Nov 13, 2009 9:56 am

Ksanderash wrote:
Monkeh16 wrote:You still gain registers, which make things generally easier and faster.
Registers? What registers? :P What for do I need them being an ordinary Windows user, not a scientist, or programmer, or something.
If you don't understand what I'm talking about, you shouldn't be talking about CPUs.

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Post by Ksanderash » Fri Nov 13, 2009 11:19 am

Monkeh16 wrote:If you don't understand what I'm talking about, you shouldn't be talking about CPUs.
And I'm not. I thought we are talking about OSes, not CPU. CPUs are all 64-bit instructions capable nowadays.
jhhoffma wrote:individual applications aren't capable of addressing more than 2GB each.
Up to 3Gb with some Microsoft approved tunning :) And the utility to adopt executables.

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Post by new2spcr » Fri Nov 13, 2009 12:49 pm

Shamgar wrote: ...constantly messing around with XP not knowing how stable it's going to be in a few months time
For me it's the opposite.

At work we use XP Pro's 32 bit and they're rock solid, never had a BSOD or freeze.
My dear (Arch) Linux, which is very bleeding edge, on the other hand is very stable when it's in a good mood but when it goes down* it goes down hard when a system upgrade goes wrong - one day your system works great, next day something breaks and you have to spend hours fixing it or wait for a upstream patch. ^^
It's fun but can be frustrating if you have other urgent stuff you need to do with your computer.

Windows XP is mature and tried and tested, why fix something that isn't broken. My impression is that Opensource developers on the other hand often are more enthusiastic about developing new features instead of making an existing feature rock solid and dependable. That's what most people want isn't it?

Kind of sad, but I think that's one of the reason Linux will never "make it to the desktop".
There are rock solid distros such as CentOS but then, new hardware detection will become problem and the system fonts... the fonts are very blurry. I want crisp Microsoft fonts.

* Like, kernel panics, broken fonts, broken Xorg, no 3D rendering, USB-sticks suddenly not being detected properly etc

I've never had problems with broken fonts in Windows, nor usb-drives suddenly not being detected or stuff that worked well suddenly ceased working or a Microsoft Update that went berserk on the system.

Little off topic, sorry.

Monkeh16
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Post by Monkeh16 » Fri Nov 13, 2009 1:21 pm

Ksanderash wrote:
Monkeh16 wrote:If you don't understand what I'm talking about, you shouldn't be talking about CPUs.
And I'm not. I thought we are talking about OSes, not CPU. CPUs are all 64-bit instructions capable nowadays.
If your RAM amount is 2Gb or less -- you won't derive not a one benefit from the 64-bit calculations.
I don't see how this isn't about CPUs.

Shamgar
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Post by Shamgar » Fri Nov 13, 2009 11:20 pm

new2spcr wrote:
Shamgar wrote: ...constantly messing around with XP not knowing how stable it's going to be in a few months time
For me it's the opposite.

At work we use XP Pro's 32 bit and they're rock solid, never had a BSOD or freeze.
It's not that I don't find it rock solid. I like XP and it's served me better than any OS thus far. Although I do occasionally get BSODs and freezes which painfully require a hard reset. The "not knowing how stable it's going to be in a few months time" is me referring to the fact that I like to configure a lot of "hidden" things in XP and install lots of third party and open source apps which may reduce stability in the long term. However, it doesn't actually become "less stable", from what I can gather. I do eventually reinstall or reimage Windows after several months anyway.

The other thing is Windows updates and hotfixes which are just installed out of a blind trust that it's supposed to make things better. As soon as MS's security bulletins are released each month, most people, including myself apply the patches, yet most don't have any idea what changes it's really making to the system.
new2spcr wrote:Windows XP is mature and tried and tested, why fix something that isn't broken. My impression is that Opensource developers on the other hand often are more enthusiastic about developing new features instead of making an existing feature rock solid and dependable. That's what most people want isn't it?
I guess it's due to two different schools of philosophy. Windows is made to be a proprietary, dominant, standard OS, and so it has to be a one size fits all product. The company behind such product(s) believe the best way to deliver that is to have near total control of it. This way, most (I say most because you can usually install things that MS doesn't "approve of") or everything has to be approved by the boss, so to speak. Open Source and Linux believe in individual freedom to change and develop an OS to suit its user and in free software to anyone available who can and will use it. Both philosophies have their merits and shortcomings, and which one you support more depends on what you expect from a computer experience, your personal moral and ethical beliefs, your economic situation, your interest in software and development, and so on. Some, if not most people don't care and use what they're given, told to use or grew up with.

For most Windows users, the OS is a means to an end. It is just a way for them to get the office work done, write up the school assignments, get on the internet, play games, listen to music etc. They generally don't care what's going on underneath the GUI, what control the OS is placing on them etc, as long as it gives them a way to do and enjoy these activities. For the [zealous] Linux user on the other hand, the means is the end. The attraction of an OS which allows them to configure and change almost everything and develop it into something completely different because the code is available for free is what they care about. The ability to do the other "lesser things" that a Windows user take for granted (office, internet, media etc) happens to be an additional option should they choose to use it.

But, as many Linux distros try to attract more mainstream attention, the original philosophy may become further from reality for many true believers as this push will inevitably try to make a "one size fits all product", especially from one of the major distros. Why is this so? Well, if you want to compete with Windows (and now Google) in the netbook market for instance, you will have to have a fairly stable, standardised distro that will enable the "dummy" population to do what they can and expect to do in Windows. Unlike on the desktop, where Linux users and Linux tryers can install several distros and run LiveCDs whenever they want and nuke any that don't work for them, netbook and laptop users don't want to fuss with this. It's switch on, boot up and get me on Facebook, etc etc. This is one of the reasons why I don't see MS do anything but dominate the netbook/laptop market as well, as they have been doing, albeit after a slow start, where ironically, Linux had the one up on them.
new2spcr wrote:Kind of sad, but I think that's one of the reason Linux will never "make it to the desktop".
There are rock solid distros such as CentOS but then, new hardware detection will become problem and the system fonts... the fonts are very blurry. I want crisp Microsoft fonts.

* Like, kernel panics, broken fonts, broken Xorg, no 3D rendering, USB-sticks suddenly not being detected properly etc

I've never had problems with broken fonts in Windows, nor usb-drives suddenly not being detected or stuff that worked well suddenly ceased working or a Microsoft Update that went berserk on the system.
Funny you mention these things. I've always hated how XP cannot detect my screen resolution and monitor after a clean install, and I have to fight with it to get it to use the display driver and settings I want it to. The fact of having to install video card software like Catalyst to fine-tune certain settings that should be able to be done by the OS is also very annoying. (Windows 7 has addressed many of these issues, though, which is a good sign and another reason to upgrade.) Once it's working and conceded to my instructions, it works well. I've also gotten used to Windows fonts over the years and could hardly get on without them. But after trying Linux, I was very surprised how good the desktop looked at default after a clean install or boot off a LiveCD. It recognised my screen resolution straight away and ClearType (or its equivalent) was used by default. Icons and text size was also very well balanced and easily configurable. Plus, you have the option to choose from a variety of desktops like KDE, Gnome, XFCE etc. to suit your preferences.
new2spcr wrote:Little off topic, sorry.
We are forgiven. After all, this is SPCR. We are hardly ever on topic. After the first three posts anyway. :shock:

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Post by ck8-04 » Sat Nov 14, 2009 9:24 am

Ksanderash wrote:
RoGuE wrote:This is completely false. A 32-bit OS can not address more than 4gb (in fact it's more like 3.5).
OK. Will you believe if I'll post some screens? :roll: I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate x86, 2 x 2Gb RAM is installed, screens are taken after applying the patch.

Image Image Image Image

How it can be true? See here for details.
Windows 7 and Vista 32-bit will report 4GB of RAM if a system has that much installed, but the actual amount available for the OS depends on how much memory is reserved for other devices. I have 4GB of RAM in my system and I'm running 32-bit Vista with a 512MB 9800GT. The System Properties window tells me that there's 4GB of memory, however, the actual amount available to the OS is only 3324MB, according to the Task Manager.

BTW, how did you get the classic theme for Windows 7?

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Post by DiGital » Sat Nov 14, 2009 9:31 am

ck8-04 wrote:
Ksanderash wrote:
RoGuE wrote:This is completely false. A 32-bit OS can not address more than 4gb (in fact it's more like 3.5).
OK. Will you believe if I'll post some screens? :roll: I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate x86, 2 x 2Gb RAM is installed, screens are taken after applying the patch.

Image Image Image Image

How it can be true? See here for details.
Windows 7 and Vista 32-bit will report 4GB of RAM if a system has that much installed, but the actual amount available for the OS depends on how much memory is reserved for other devices. I have 4GB of RAM in my system and I'm running 32-bit Vista with a 512MB 9800GT. The System Properties window tells me that there's 4GB of memory, however, the actual amount available to the OS is only 3324MB, according to the Task Manager.
Screenshots are from Windows Vista, there is no service tab in Windows Xp's Task manager for example.

On the topic - i think 64bit Windows 7 is the right choice! More and more software is written 64bit, no 4gb RAM troubles and you take most out of today CPU power.

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Post by nick705 » Sat Nov 14, 2009 11:01 am

cmthomson wrote:The big issue with 64-bit is drivers for older hardware.

If your system doesn't have anything older than about 3 years attached, you're good to go; x64 will not only address more memory, it also has some new instructions that speed up general code a few percent.

If you have an old scanner, printer, camera etc, then you may be stuck with x32, as I am, because many vendors (especially HP) will never release updated drivers for them. Partly they're hoping you'll use this as a reason to replace all those devices. :roll:
I'd just like to pick up on this point here - I have a 6-year-old and perfectly functional Canon scanner, for which Canon have not seen fit to write x64 drivers, no doubt recognising an opportunity to flog new hardware to people who wouldn't otherwise need it.

It *does* however work in Win7 Professional's XP mode, simply by installing the 32-bit drivers in the XP virtual machine and enabling USB passthrough. Furthermore, for those who don't have Win7 Pro or higher and hence don't have XP mode, you can achieve the same end by downloading the free VMware player (the latest version allows you to create virtual machines) and installing a small Linux distro - you'll be able to access all the USB peripherals supported by the Linux kernel, so in my case I can use XSane running in a Linux VM to perform the scans, and save them to a network shared folder on the Win7 x64 host.

It's a bit of a kludgy solution admittedly, but with a bit of fiddling it actually works pretty well in practice, and in my book it beats throwing away perfectly serviceable hardware for no other reason than to line the pockets of cynical manufacturers. If anyone has (relatively) old USB peripherals that won't work in an x64 Windows environment, it's worth giving it a shot at least.

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Post by Ksanderash » Sat Nov 14, 2009 2:20 pm

ck8-04 wrote:however, the actual amount available to the OS is only 3324MB, according to the Task Manager.
I made some extra screens on purpose -- to show that the full amount of 4GB memory can be used. Look at processes window more attentively.
BTW, how did you get the classic theme for Windows 7?
Easily. Control Panel > Personalization > Basic and High Contrast Themes > Windows classic.
nick705 wrote:It *does* however work in Win7 Professional's XP mode, simply by installing the 32-bit drivers in the XP virtual machine and enabling USB passthrough.
Good solution, but a virtualization technology capable CPU must be installed to use Windows 7 XP Mode (though this denial can be bypassed by using VirtualBox or VMware, as you said, they have USB support too).

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Post by new2spcr » Sat Nov 14, 2009 3:04 pm

Interesting thoughts Shamgar. I think you've narrowed it down the Linux dilemma further; what people does Linux want to attract? "Regular users" that simply wants to get their work done or open source OS enthusiasts that don't mind, tinkering with their OS and applications.
Perhaps the Linux community and developers are in a gray zone or transition where it wants to keep the old time regulars, the enthusiasts, and at the same time feels an urge to attract converts from Microsoft and others.

Attracting the former has never been a problem, and with couple of distro's very aggressive marketing, Linux is and will probably attract many of the latter too. But how long will they stay? The average Linux distro out there, I hate to say it, is probably more or less equivalent to an unpolished Windows Vista. Some things work extraordinary well, but some don't. The things that don't work, XP users take those for granted. Like Wi-Fi, hibernation, great fonts and many more. The more seasoned Linux user would know how to dig out all necessary information to make that printer or wi-fi work but most people don't have time or energy to do that. It's much easier to just pop in the manufacturer's driver cd and click install. Until Linux and open source has gotten there, it's not ready for the masses. Competition is fierce; Good ol' XP Pro and now W7 are pulling everybody's attention, which is good. Competition usually means better products for us.

I'd venture to say it doesn't matter much if there is Compiz, XFCE/Gnome/Kde, conky and other cool stuff for Linux - if basic things don't work out well, it's too unpolished. Me, I don't mind using closed source applications, I just want the stuff to work.

I think Apple has done it right for both camps (not that I'm a big fan of OS X), they've polished their OS well, with a nice gui for everything, but you could get your hands dirty with a shell if you're inclined to those stuff.
Shamgar wrote: [snip]
We are forgiven. After all, this is SPCR. We are hardly ever on topic. After the first three posts anyway. :shock:
That's cool. ^^

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Post by MikeC » Sat Nov 14, 2009 6:13 pm

Ksanderash wrote:How it can be true? See here for details.
That's a great article! Excellent piece -- and yet more evidence of Microsoft's rabid capitalist/monopolist core.

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Post by AZBrandon » Sat Nov 14, 2009 8:19 pm

MikeC wrote:
Ksanderash wrote:How it can be true? See here for details.
That's a great article! Excellent piece -- and yet more evidence of Microsoft's rabid capitalist/monopolist core.
I like that he pointed out that in theory, a 16-bit processor can only address 64KB of memory and right from the start, DOS was designed to address 10 times that amount of memory from the 16-bit 8086 to 80286 CPUs. Microsoft OS's thus have a long history of addressing more memory than the CPU was designed to directly access under the theoretical rules. The fact that Windows 64-bit only raises the limit to 192 GB seems to show clear evidence that it was always about planned obsolescence and licensing, and never about the technology itself.

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Post by Shamgar » Sun Nov 15, 2009 6:33 am

nick705 wrote:I'd just like to pick up on this point here - I have a 6-year-old and perfectly functional Canon scanner, for which Canon have not seen fit to write x64 drivers, no doubt recognising an opportunity to flog new hardware to people who wouldn't otherwise need it.

It *does* however work in Win7 Professional's XP mode, simply by installing the 32-bit drivers in the XP virtual machine and enabling USB passthrough. [...]
It's a bit of a kludgy solution admittedly, but with a bit of fiddling it actually works pretty well in practice, and in my book it beats throwing away perfectly serviceable hardware for no other reason than to line the pockets of cynical manufacturers. If anyone has (relatively) old USB peripherals that won't work in an x64 Windows environment, it's worth giving it a shot at least.
I have Canon hardware that has no x64 drivers available either, plus a few others with no support. I would hate to be forced to throw them out just for the sake of running 64-bit. So I wonder whether it's really worth the trouble if I'm not needing the 4GB or more of memory in real use. Many manufacturers are not and have no intention of releasing x64 drivers, even for newer hardware. There may be independent driver "hacks" available but I'd rather not take the risk with those.

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Post by Shamgar » Sun Nov 15, 2009 7:04 am

new2spcr wrote:(...) The more seasoned Linux user would know how to dig out all necessary information to make that printer or wi-fi work but most people don't have time or energy to do that. It's much easier to just pop in the manufacturer's driver cd and click install. Until Linux and open source has gotten there, it's not ready for the masses. Competition is fierce; Good ol' XP Pro and now W7 are pulling everybody's attention, which is good. Competition usually means better products for us.
Those seasoned Linuxers will say, "All you have to do is go to a shell and type in a few commands." After all, those commands are what's being sent when you click through a GUI anyway, right? Yes, but most people don't want to bother with that anymore, whether rightly or wrongly; it's the trend of society. I learnt computers using MSDOS so using command prompts was not an issue for me; even to this day, I often use it to diagnose and fix things. So I have no firm resistance with learning the Linux shell commands if I really had to to get things working. But I would prefer not to. Why? Because time is already stretched and I don't want to spend half my life getting an OS to do things that should be a given to work. Windows has its shortcomings and utter failures, but things can be remedied usually quickly, and most hardware usually works out of the box nowadays. 'Tis sad, but I think Linux has a long way to go to be accepted as a genuine desktop alternative to Windows, especially now that Windows 7 looks to become a real ("deserved") success for Microsoft. I would love to use Linux as an everyday OS, but there are just too many things that I take for granted in Windows that I couldn't give up in order to use an OS that I believe is more fitting to my principles. Sad, but a fact of present life.

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Post by new2spcr » Mon Nov 16, 2009 12:48 am

Shamgar wrote:
new2spcr wrote:(...) The more seasoned Linux user would know how to dig out all necessary information to make that printer or wi-fi work but most people don't have time or energy to do that. It's much easier to just pop in the manufacturer's driver cd and click install. Until Linux and open source has gotten there, it's not ready for the masses. Competition is fierce; Good ol' XP Pro and now W7 are pulling everybody's attention, which is good. Competition usually means better products for us.
Those seasoned Linuxers will say, "All you have to do is go to a shell and type in a few commands." After all, those commands are what's being sent when you click through a GUI anyway, right? Yes, but most people don't want to bother with that anymore, whether rightly or wrongly; it's the trend of society. I learnt computers using MSDOS so using command prompts was not an issue for me; even to this day, I often use it to diagnose and fix things. So I have no firm resistance with learning the Linux shell commands if I really had to to get things working. But I would prefer not to. Why? Because time is already stretched and I don't want to spend half my life getting an OS to do things that should be a given to work. Windows has its shortcomings and utter failures, but things can be remedied usually quickly, and most hardware usually works out of the box nowadays. 'Tis sad, but I think Linux has a long way to go to be accepted as a genuine desktop alternative to Windows, especially now that Windows 7 looks to become a real ("deserved") success for Microsoft. I would love to use Linux as an everyday OS, but there are just too many things that I take for granted in Windows that I couldn't give up in order to use an OS that I believe is more fitting to my principles. Sad, but a fact of present life.
"All you have to do is go to a shell and type in a few commands."
Yes, this is exactly what I meant - people want pop up windoes and click "Enter", "Ok" button, they don't care if CLI can perform the task faster. Even if the cli command is very short and easy to remember, say, "yum update" to perform a system upgrade, people just don't like typing stuff. I don't mind using the cli either but I often miss the simplicity of having a neat GUI asking me to click and continue rather than me having to open a terminal and type some long commands.
Another thing that is a huge obstacle in Linux's way to the average desktop, IMO, is the frequent version releases (often twice a year!) that often either breaks the system or introduces new bugs that takes time to get fixed or simply are being ignored:

http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7600/1.html

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Post by Shamgar » Tue Nov 17, 2009 3:44 pm

PC Authority (Australian mainstream technology magazine with an I.T. industry focus) posted some articles recently on 64-bit Windows
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/1548 ... witch.aspx
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/1551 ... ained.aspx
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/1554 ... limit.aspx

The last piece is particularly interesting. Their tests showed no significant improvements in 64-bit or when boosted with 8GB RAM when running the professional versions of Adobe Photoshop and Premiere. They qualify this to say that 8GB+ will be more useful in other scenarios and for the future when 8GB becomes standard by ~2012 (see graph). Make of it what you will etc., but this agrees with a lot of other opinions I've read of lately on this subject. Including that of Microbloat.

The whole "If you run "*Photoshop", go out and buy 12GB of RAM and 64-bit because you'll need it" statement doesn't seem to be that wise after all. For your programs, nor your wallet. Not yet, anyway.

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Post by danimal » Wed Nov 18, 2009 12:05 pm

the benefits of 64-bit applications aren't always about addressing more ram... adobe says that you should average 8-12% improvements in speed with 64-bit photoshop:
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/04/ph ... lr_64.html

finding 64-bit filters is where the problem arises.

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