64-bit And A Day Later…

Yes I finally bit the bullet and went 64-bit.

For one thing, it sucks that there’s no 64-bit browser plug-in support in Sun’s JAVA Runtimes. That means I still have to fall back to the normal, 32-bit Firefox and IEs. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, but since I’m on 64-bit I’d prefer to use native 64-bit stuff, you know? Installing the 64-bit version of the JRE is pretty pointless on a PC, unless you’re doing development work. All other software you have will probably run fine on 32-bit version of the JRE.

First of all, many people have said that the PC will “slow down” when running 32-bit software because it’s not native. My reply – no difference. It’s the same as your standard Windows XP trying to run a DOS program (16-bit). If you didn’t find your DOS program “slowing down”, you won’t find 32-bit software “slowing down” on your 64-bit OS.

There were some hoops I had to jump through to install some stuff, though. Be warned. For example, Windows Live Photo Gallery, part of the Windows Live suite of programs, refused to install, claiming that WinXP 64 was unsupported. Luckily, I found a workaround and installed it anyway and it runs fine. The trick is to get the actual MSI file and bypass Microsoft’s retarded installer. Yes, it’s 32-bit but it runs fine.

The big test was of course, my games. If any of my games refused to run on x64, you can bet I’ll reformat back to bog-standard Windows XP. Fortunately, they ran fine.

So in conclusion, I guess I’m staying with WinXP x64 then. I have yet to encounter any application that can’t be run on 64-bit Windows XP. As far as I am concerned, 100% of whatever I use run fine. It’s just too bad that there’s no 64-bit version of some of the software I’d like to have, like Gimp.