Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Is 64bit worth it
- Thread starter ert3
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
For a MacBook Pro? Unless you need a 64-bit application for your workflow, the answer is a strong no.
Unless you like windows crappy (and plentiful) 64 bit compatibility/drivers/general issues or really need more then 4gb of ram then I would say no as well.
Is it something beyond software/driver compatibility? I found myself in the same position until I spent the past week with Vista. I feel like a hypocrite now that I really do like the changes in Vista.I haven't... and have no plans to, either. I don't like Vista at all.
I currently use Vista Ultimate 64-bit as my DVR/PVR and gaming operating system. Not to mention Office 2003/7.
My wife had issues burning music CD's from iTunes in Vista Ultimate 64bit. It is/was a 64bit problem only though, and not on Apple hardware. I am not sure if it still exists though, she wanted to burn one disk one time, and couldn't.
Most of the complaints I have heard (granted they are mainly from my father, and his sub $700 laptop) are of Vista Home basic or premium. He loves the Aero interface, but hates it because its slow. Its barely got enough ram in it, and well... its a sub $700 laptop. It does not have the best hardware in it. My wife's Sager (makers of the Alienware laptops) laptop which is really decked out (2ghz c2d 2gig ram dedicated Video etc) has no issues with 64bit Vista Ultimate, other than itunes, but thats not really vista.
Barring some of the issues that can be fixed in a service pack (Vista cannot see a hidden wifi network reliably, etc) if MS had a hardware line similar to Apple's, and built Vista to run on that hardware specifically, there would be fewer people complaining of any issues that the root cause was hardware, which I would imagine would be at least 25% of the problem.
Most of the complaints I have heard (granted they are mainly from my father, and his sub $700 laptop) are of Vista Home basic or premium. He loves the Aero interface, but hates it because its slow. Its barely got enough ram in it, and well... its a sub $700 laptop. It does not have the best hardware in it. My wife's Sager (makers of the Alienware laptops) laptop which is really decked out (2ghz c2d 2gig ram dedicated Video etc) has no issues with 64bit Vista Ultimate, other than itunes, but thats not really vista.
Barring some of the issues that can be fixed in a service pack (Vista cannot see a hidden wifi network reliably, etc) if MS had a hardware line similar to Apple's, and built Vista to run on that hardware specifically, there would be fewer people complaining of any issues that the root cause was hardware, which I would imagine would be at least 25% of the problem.
Yes. My biggest beef with Vista is UAC (which is actually worse than the equivalent feature in Mac OS X - the Vista one does NOT ask for a username and password).
There is no real problem with vista in a literal sense. In-fact on a horizontal playing ground it does rival Leopard.
The only problem is it's lack of proper resource management and the fact that it is still some-what susceptible to virus's.
Me too. I've been running Vista 64 since SP1 was released, and it's been awesome. It's very speedy and has yet to give me any problems. There is so much FUD about Vista it makes me sick. I would say if you're going to get Vista, go 64.
I haven't... and have no plans to, either. I don't like Vista at all.
You hate Vista, yet you've never used it? (5 minutes on your friend's computer doesn't count either). Well I have used it. And I'm still using it. It works fine. There are drivers everywhere (for stuff 2 years old and newer) and almost every app works. Even Oregon Trail worked!
Sure have. I do this stuff for a living and Vista 64 bit is in my ticket queue with problems more then any other OS, and we still have ME machines floating around the company.
Heres the problem with Vista, it works fine on some hardware setups, terrible on others. HP laptops for example (ones from about 6 - 10 months ago) have so many problems that are OS related, not hardware cause the hardware in them is fine, that a majority had to be switched to XP Pro because they ate up all our time with repairs. (Try downgrading to XP once, its not easy on most systems.)
Guess what, the ones that were able to be downgraded have had none, or very few problems since.
I'm using it at work now and actually like it pretty well. I'm one of the first to give it a try, but so far there haven't been any problems. It likes a bit of RAM but that's it.
Here's your first problem: you bought an HP laptop. They suck no matter what OS you're running on them. Besides, HP laptops come with Vista now and they don't even make drivers for XP (it will install, but a vast majority of the hardware will not work). So even if you wanted to downgrade, you couldn't. But then why would you be insane enough to buy an HP laptop in the first place?
So you have ruled everything else out? I mean you are sure it is not a hardware or driver issue? You have also tried other (32-bit) OSes on there and shown that it works fine there? You have also ruled out any third party software that may have caused this problem?
Wow you must have done a lot of work to be able to effectively say that the whole problem is just Vista 64... Kudos man... kudos...
Funnily enough Leopard on my Macbook won't even connect reliably to my visible wi-fi network whereas Vista on my Macbook connects without fail every time...
Actually the problem is a combination of hardware and drivers. If OSX had to support half the hardware that windows has to then I don't think it would be anywhere near as stable as it is now.
You can't blame Microsoft for your own shoddy hardware choices. There are a couple of manufacturers which make very good quality hardware and drivers. If you buy those then you'll have no problems.
Basically if you buy
Intel Based motherboards (Intel CPU and Intel chipset)
with nVidia or ATi graphics cards
In a branded (say Antec?) case with branded PSU.
Then you'll have no problems with your Vista based machine.
At least with MS you have that choice. You can:
1. Pay more for hardware you know is stable
2. Save money and buy cheaper hardware that could be just as stable
Umm.. what makes you think I have never used Vista? I have Vista Ultimate at home. Installed it on a Windows PC and put it through its paces. Kept it for about 2 weeks, then uninstalled it and went back to XP.
This is another reason why I just cannot go to Vista. . . ME. . . Every time I see ME or think of ME I have flashbacks of rebooting every 2 seconds and it going soooo slow. It's the main reason why I got a powerbook. . . turned me off Windows so much that I switched. So I don't want another OS to haunt my dreams. I mean I have tried Vista, and it was just slow and clunky and not pragmatic. To be fair this was back when it first came out.
These are not consumer laptops I am talking about they are the business versions. When you order lots of them through a company you can get vista or xp. Unfortunatly whoever did the ordering picked the vista option. The business versions do have XP drivers for everything but a webcam (if the model has the webcam) so downgrading wasn't a huge problem.
With these machines running XP they work fine.
Although I agree, HP laptops of late have been pretty terrible. 3 years ago they were awesome. Wonder what happened.
I agree with chrono1081 about Vista. It works good on the majority of hardware but is also terrible on some hardware. I'm talking about PC's that came shipped with Vista which had all the drivers pre-installed and not upgrades. I've seen this on Dell computers that come with Vista. We have about 6 Vista PC's here at work and out of those, 4 work fine with no complaints while 2 are a complete nightmare. One is a laptop that constantly grinds at the disk and won't let you install a single update and the other one will work fine for about a day or two and then the desktop locks up. Ctrl-alt-delete works and comes up but it still won't let you end a task or restart so you have to do a hard restart. Dell has looked at the first one and after an hour of trying everything they recommended to restore from the CD because they couldn't figure anything out. The other 4 are setup exactly the same and I've never had a problem and the hardware is fine so it has to be the OS. I'll probably just downgrade both PC's to XP since they don't seem to like Vista. I run Vista 64 as a media center at home and it runs fine so there must be something about the OS that causes it not work correctly on some hardware.
Amusing at best.
I'd also like to point on the massive issues with upgrading to Leopard for many Tiger users. You all remember October 2007, right?
I built my own computer from various manufacturers and the only drivers that Vista didn't ship with were for my video card and TV tuner. I've played with both 32 and 64-bit versions. Both have never gave me any problems.
That takes a whole 5 seconds to turn off in the control panel, reverting program installs back to the way they are in XP... making that particular complaint moot.