Going to buy Windows 7 - 32 or 64 bit version?

jgallcash

Thanks for the link Jasx.

Whilst software4students is aimed at students they say that their software is full versions and NOT student or modified versions.

"We supply home users with fully-functional Professional (not Student and Teacher or Home Edition versions) software. Because of our affiliations with Microsoft and with education institutions, we are able to supply these products at hugely discounted prices (typically discounted by 80% or more). Put simply this means you (the home user) get more software at a much lower price."

I'm not looking to pin anybody down to their advice, I just want to get a good idea as to whether it will work if I buy the upgrade version.

Could I assume that these are the same as retail versions and go ahead?

Stompa

JasX wrote: »

Installing a 64bit OS onto PC with a 32bit processor (which will be v old as they've not made them for ages) has the somewhat significant disadvantage that the PC would not work at all.

Well that's what I would have thought, but a post above seemed to suggest otherwise. It made me wonder if 32bit processors these days could run in some sort of 64bit emulation mode? (which one would imagine would be slower than native 32bit).

ormus

the Intel Celeron M 530 / 1.73 GHz is a 64 bit cpu.

spaceman5

jgallcash wrote: »

Thanks for the link Jasx.

Whilst software4students is aimed at students they say that their software is full versions and NOT student or modified versions.

"We supply home users with fully-functional Professional (not Student and Teacher or Home Edition versions) software. Because of our affiliations with Microsoft and with education institutions, we are able to supply these products at hugely discounted prices (typically discounted by 80% or more). Put simply this means you (the home user) get more software at a much lower price."

I'm not looking to pin anybody down to their advice, I just want to get a good idea as to whether it will work if I buy the upgrade version.

Could I assume that these are the same as retail versions and go ahead?

software 4 students software is the retail version, so should be safe enough to go ahead

morrig

.
If you have the two disks and try and install 64 bit,error will come up and it will not proceed,so fail safe.
And the best way is to do a clean install,and it will take less than 30 minutes(after backing up).
I am sure that with the great deal you are getting you will much appreciate the improved speed and refinement of Win7 over Vista.

JasX

Clarifications:

Stompa wrote: »

Well that's what I would have thought, but a post above seemed to suggest otherwise. It made me wonder if 32bit processors these days could run in some sort of 64bit emulation mode? (which one would imagine would be slower than native 32bit).

I couldn't see any post other than yours suggesting otherwise. Basically 95% of all processors sold in the last 5 years or so are 64bit. These 64bit processors have all been designed back-compatible so they can run 32bit operating systems 'emulating' a 32bit processor.

For this reason running a 32bit OS on a 64bit processor is less efficient, also by its nature the 64bit processor will be capable of processing your 'data' much more quickly when running a 64bit OS as every clock cycle it'll be able to process 64bits of data rather than 32bits. Other bottlenecks come into play so you don't get a full 2x performance boost but the fundamentals are there and the improvements should be quite noticable.

Perhaps that clears things up a bit

jgallcash wrote: »

Whilst software4students is aimed at students they say that their software is full versions and NOT student or modified versions.

yes once installed and activated the you'll end up with the same full version, the issue is as its licensed differently (eg has an 'Academic' license rather than 'Full Retail' or 'Upgrade Retail') the install & activation process can vary and the usual assumptions, tweaks and workarounds might well not work.

spaceman5 wrote: »

software 4 students software is the retail version, so should be safe enough to go ahead

are you sure its a Retail not an Academic license?

Sublime_2

64 bit. You won't regret it.

Stompa

JasX wrote: »

Basically 95% of all processors sold in the last 5 years or so are 64bit. These 64bit processors have all been designed back-compatible so they can run 32bit operating systems 'emulating' a 32bit processor.

For this reason running a 32bit OS on a 64bit processor is less efficient, also by its nature the 64bit processor will be capable of processing your 'data' much more quickly when running a 64bit OS as every clock cycle it'll be able to process 64bits of data rather than 32bits. Other bottlenecks come into play so you don't get a full 2x performance boost but the fundamentals are there and the improvements should be quite noticable.

Perhaps that clears things up a bit

Yes, many thanks for that. What reasons might there be for running a 32bit OS on a 64bit processor? I imagine it might be useful for a developer but are there any reasons why an end user might want to do so? (I'm guessing that maybe there is some software that's simply incompatible with a 64bit OS?, though having said that perhaps 64bit Windows has it's own 32bit emulation mode?)

delain

My OH had XP on 64-bit and could not use his webcam, or printer and lots of software because everything was geared towards 32 bit. On the other side of the same coin, most viruses are geared towards 32-bit as well and he never had a virus problem

JasX

Stompa wrote: »

What reasons might there be for running a 32bit OS on a 64bit processor? I imagine it might be useful for a developer but are there any reasons why an end user might want to do so?

Basically because when they bought out the first commercial 64-bit processors everyone was using 32bit (mostly windows) OSs and virtually everyone was writing software for 32bit systems.

64bit has all the fundamentals going for it performance wise and has tried quite hard to be backwards compatible but there will still be odd old bits of hardware and software designed for 32bit that really won't work well/at all on 64bit.

Going forward all new stuff will work on 64bit and will generally be more efficient (eventually).

Only if you're particularly attached to something old that doesn't work on 64bits is there a reason to stay on the old format OS, eventually no new stuff will come out that works on 32bits so you'll have to choose eventually whether to ditch your old legacy stuff and move to 64bits or stick with 32bits and accept no new stuff will work on your machine.

*if you move to 64bits and something doesn't now work there is a chance it might work in future either by the manufacturer re-writing its driver to work better on a 64bit OS or 64bit OSs being tweaked to make them more 32bit friendly, unlikely with something cheap, old, obscure or that the company is out of business for. more likely the more recent/popular/expensive something is and if its from a major company that tends to keep its stuff up to date.