The latest installment of Windows has been quite a good success, especially when compared to Vista! If you’re planning on buying Windows 7 then you are going to need to decide between 32bit and 64bit. Now, depending on your processor you may only be capable of running 32bit, you are going to need to check if your processor is 64bit capable.

You can check this in either device manager or your computer properties, if you’re on a 32bit processor then you should have (x86) next to your processor listing, if you’re on 64bit then you should have (x64) next to it.

Now that you’ve determined what processor you have you can decide upon whether you should go for 32bit or 64bit Windows 7. There are a few things to consider first before doing this.

Firstly, how much memory do you have? If you have 4GB or under and don’t plan on ever going above 4GB (most people won’t be doing this for a while) then 64bit Windows is going to be quite pointless. Essentially Windows 7 64bit will allow you to use more than 4GB of ram. Technically speaking 4GB is the limit for a 32bit processor and operating system. 64bit allows for much more memory usage.

Whether you need more than 4GB of ram is dependent upon what you use your computer for, if you’re running lots of different memory intensive applications at once then you might benefit from more than 4GB and in which case the 64bit Windows 7 is for you.

If however you are a casual user and don’t plan on running lots of different programs at once then chances are you won’t need to go for the 64bit edition. Having the 64bit Windows 7 isn’t something you should consider unless you really need it. The reason I say this is because there are still issues with 64bit drivers for some hardware. Simply put if you have some uncommon third party hardware there might not be any 64bit Windows 7 drivers available, and if there aren’t – you won’t be able to use it!

This is the most common reason for people to not upgrade to a 64bit operating system because of the lack of driver support for a lot of hardware; this is especially applicable for Windows 7 because it is a relatively new version of windows.

My advice to anyone considering Windows 7 64bit over 32bit is this – Do you have more than 4GB of memory and are you going to benefit from more? Most casual users simply don’t need it right now and you might think it’s great to have 8GB or more, but a lot of the time it simply won’t get used. If you are running many applications at once and you know for sure that your memory usage can get quite high then yes, go for Windows 7 64bit, but also be aware that you might have to spend some time hunting down 64bit versions of drivers for your hardware.

If you do decide to go for 64bit Windows then you can be safe in the knowledge that your operating system is now future proof and having Windows 7 64bit should mean you won’t need to upgrade for quite a long time!

More and more people each day are facing the dilemma on whether to install the 64bit edition of windows, whether it be for xp, vista (although I hope by now that people have realised how bad an OS vista really is!) or Windows 7. And why wouldnt they? More and more computers are coming with 64bit proessors giving people the choice of a 32bit operating system or a 64bit operating system. Lets take a look at the differences between the two.

Address Space – Without going into too much detail on how a processor works you need to know that processors read data as bits, which can also be refered to as binary or a 1 or 0.  With a 32bit processor you can handle numbers from 0 to 2^32 or 4,294,967,295. Thats a big number, right? Well a 64bit processor can handle numbers from 0 to 2^64 or 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. So to put these into numbers you can relate to a bit more; a 32bit processor can address roughly 4GB of memory, a 64 bit processor on the other hand can address approximately 18.5 exabytes of memory (1000gb = 1 terabyte, 1000 terabytes = 1 exabyte!) Now im sure you will all agree thats a lot of memory! More than anyone is ever going to need for a long time!

To sum this up, if you have more than 4GB of memory on a 32bit operating system then its never really being used and its technically sitting there doing nothing. If however your on a 64bit operating system then you can address more than 4GB of memory. Most operating systems will still have their own memory limit but its usually very high, Vista Ultimate for example has a limit of 128GB.

The benefits – Ok so we’ve established that we can address a LOT more memory with a 64 bit processor and operating system, but what does this actually mean for the average user? Well quite frankly not a lot! The problem is that the majority of software available has been designed for 32bit and therefore cannot really take advantage of the 64bit features and address space, sure there are a few 64 bit software editions (x64) but there usually few and far between. If your running several memory hungry applications at once then you will probably see some benefits, but for the average user this is unlikely.

The problems – For a lot of people upgrading to a 64bit operating system could soon turn into a nightmare when you try to find 64bit drivers for your hardware. Your normal drivers will NOT work, period. So you need to hope that the manufacture has created 64bit versions or you get lucky and find a 3rd party release. Luckily most 32bit software will run fine on a 64bit operating system in compatibility mode. 16bit software on the other hand will NOT work on 64bit, although most people will no longer use any 16bit software.

In summary then 64 bit operating systems are great, on paper. In practice though there is simply not enough support for 64bit right now and for the average user there is no benefit to upgrading from 32bit to 64bit. In a few years time this will probably change but for now, id stick with 32bit!