Good apps for 64-bit Vista?

December 18, 2008 5:10 PM

I just upgraded my computer and am trying out the 64-bit edition of Vista. While my hardware has been mostly compliant, my trouble has been mostly with software. For instance, the 64-bit version of IE (the only 64-bit browser?) is screaming fast, but it doesn't support Java or Flash. I'd love to be able to get some apps that can take advantage of the new horsepower at my disposal, but so far, it's been more of a nuisance than a benefit. Can anyone recommend any usable 64-bit versions of apps for basic computer use? (web browsing, text-editing, photo-editing, media-viewing, etc)
posted by stuckie to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

A lot of benchmarks for enterprise apps (like databases, in-house apps, etc) clock 64-bit apps as slower than 32-bit apps. It's only beneficial if you need to have huge amounts of memory available to a single process. Do you have more than 4GB of memory? If not, you'll only see the bad stuff like driver incompatibility and slower execution.
posted by GuyZero at 5:16 PM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

64 bit Flash and Java are forthcoming. There are working betas both out right now; 64 bit flash is Linux-only at the moment. There's also a 64 bit build of Firefox if you're willing to play with it.
posted by zsazsa at 5:21 PM on December 18, 2008

For routine work there's probably no benefit in going to 64-bit right now. As GuyZero says, the only advantage is that you can access >4GB of memory in 64-bit. In standard 32-bit windows you can only really use up to about 3GB of memory, so if you don't have 4GB or more you won't see any improvement.

64 bit is right now really for people who need huge amounts of memory - if you're not doing video editing or working with huge images it will likely not be that useful.
posted by pombe at 5:31 PM on December 18, 2008

From all reports, it's too bleeding edge for day to day work. You're sort of looking at things backwards: I have this shiny new tool, now what can I fix?

Wait until you have a problem that 64-bit Vista would help with, or wait until there are apps that actually entice you to run it, then use it. Otherwise you're just inconveniencing yourself in a hundred small ways all for the feeling that you're using something faster or better.
posted by rokusan at 5:58 PM on December 18, 2008

If you stay in the 64 bit world, you can run a 32 bit instance of XP or Vista in a VM like VirtualBox.

I do this on my Vista machine to run Linux and on my Mac to run Windows Server 2008 and Ubututu.

One of the benefits of having 4GB of ram is that I can run a couple VMs at the same time.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 6:16 PM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

Best answer: As others have said, apart from avoiding extensions and making yourself less of a target to hackers there's currently no benefit from running a 64-bit browser. The browser simply doesn't need to address > 3 GB of memory for any current realistic user scenario. (And the lack of extensions is probably the only reason it perceptibly seemed faster unless it was the placebo effect.)

There are an increasing number of end-user applications that have 64-bit versions: Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop CS4, Lightwave 3D, etc., and if you're into those kinds of applications and have a lot of RAM, it's well worth it.

I happily run 64-bit Vista on a machine with 8 GB. 8 GB is really cheap and disk I/O is one of the biggest bottlenecks when heavily multitasking, so for me this is the primary advantage.
posted by GoldenShackles at 6:47 PM on December 18, 2008

One small thing to add: If you have the RAM (4 GB or more), as of Vista there's no benefit I can think of to run the 32-bit version over the 64-bit one, especially if you plan to add more RAM in the future.

The driver support should be the same, at least for Microsoft certified drivers. Between my desktop, laptop, and several machines running 64-bit Vista I have encountered zero 64-bit specific driver or application compatibility issues.
posted by GoldenShackles at 6:53 PM on December 18, 2008

Best answer: Here's a list. Yes, you can run Firefox and Java. No flash yet.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:07 PM on December 18, 2008

Vista 64 comes with both 32- and 64-bit builds of IE. The 32-bit version will happily run flash and such. So will 32-bit versions of Opera and Firefox.
posted by kickingtheground at 8:40 PM on December 18, 2008

Response by poster: @goldenshackles - I DO have a good amount of memory to play with - just upped the RAM to 8gb and the prospect of a 64-bit Photoshop CS4 is one of the reasons I was eager to try it out. I have another old ATA drive with my old XP on it in case I need to use something that only works with that - I'd just like my Vista installation to be as usable as possible.

@damndirtyape - That's a great list - any idea how current it is? I got Office 2007 from a friend at Microsoft (on the employee discount), but even it doesn't seem to have a 64-bit version! Excitedly looking forward to native 64 releases of more mainstream apps. I guess the most idea thing would be a list or site that tracked these things as they were released, the was some sites track new iPhone apps. There have got to be a ton of people in the same boat, eagerly waiting for the gaps to be filled in...
posted by stuckie at 10:27 PM on December 18, 2008

"Can anyone recommend any usable 64-bit versions of apps for basic computer use?"

Start64 does a pretty fair job of keeping up with what's available in the 64-bit desktop application world. Try looking for your favorite applications there.
posted by majick at 10:30 PM on December 18, 2008