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does win XP 64-bit suck?

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urlwolf:
I'm moving to a machine with 8gb of RAM.
I'll need a 64-bit OS to address all that memory.

I think I'll stick to linux, but, just in case...
does win XP 64-bit suck?

It'll probably save some time (hundreds of hours :) ) to use win XP, at least at the beginning, and run linux on top of it with andlinux. Big problem: andlinux uses only one core.

jgpaiva:
Or you could go for Vista 64 :)

I've been using it in my Core Duo2 laptop with 4GB of ram without having any problem for 3 months now.

Eóin:
It's doesn't suck one bit, I've been using it as my primary OS for the best part of three years now. I do tend to dual boot with regular XP for games though. It's not that they don't work with XP x64 just that I've always like to keep my game OS and work/development OS separate.

f0dder:
I've been using XP64 for a while (at least since January... perhaps longer?) and I don't think it sucks.

Most stuff works just fine, with the noticeable exception of anything 16-bit - DOS as well as win16 programs. This does mean you'll have problems installing some old apps; even if the apps themselves are 32bit, some of the older installers are 16bit.

There can also be problems with some older games, relying on 32bit drivers for their copy protection mechanism. The solution is to find a crack somewhere, makes the games run better as well. I don't see this as unethical when you own the game.

Most 32bit stuff runs at the same speed as under 32bit XP. A few things might run a bit faster, if they spend a lot of time doing in OS or driver code. A few things run slower - 32bit FoxIt Reader, for instance, is massively slow at rendering pages (only shows with very complex PDFs though), but Sumatra  runs just fine.

Shell extensions can be a problem - not everybody knows how to compile their stuff for 64bit. This can be solved by using a 32bit explorer replacement like xplorer2, though.

mouser:
I've been using winX64 for several months. some impressions:

1) WinXp service packs do not get released for x64, at least not on any human timescale (SP3 is not available to x64 users).  Not cool.
2) Mostly everything runs fine.
3) As f0dder points out, explorer shell extensions mostly do not exist for x64 -- so if you have a favorite shell extension (like copy folder path to clipboard, system clock) you may be out of luck, or at least severely restricted in your options.  If you have old hardware (scanners) you might experience trouble.
4) My experience has been a few more random application crashes that i suspect are due to x64, but nothing really major.
5) Is it worth it? I'd think twice about doing it again -- i notice no difference over my normal xp install so i don't really see much gain.  Unless you *really* want to be able to access that extra memory, give it a skip.  But if you can't bear to live without full access to the memory, win x64 runs fine and is stable.

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