Should I upgrade from 32b OS to 64b OS?

[Cableguy]

Hi guys and gals

I only have one PC, a low-end Z3775 based NetBook that came with Win7 and later upgraded to Win10(32bit).

I have always had this idea that 64bit system are more troublesome than they're worth, but I found myself thinking... could I be WRONG?

SO, given my ASUS T100ta specs:

Bitrail Z3775
2GB RAM
32 eMMC + 1TB HDD(in the keyboard)

I would like your advice on this...
Should I consider upgrading to 64Bit WIN10?

 

[KMatle]

I'm on 64Bit for 3 years now (WIN10) and everything is fine. I must say that I have an i5 with 12 GB of RAM (was installed) and a SSD.

I wouldn't upgrade your system to 64bit anymore (maybe upgrade to 4 GB). I would buy new hw with 8 GB RAM at least (=64Bit)

 

[agraham]

The only reason for upgrading to a 64bit OS is if any individual program that you need to run needs more than 2 GB of RAM. Most programs that you are likely to use are either only 32bits or come in both 32 and 64bit versions. Even Visual Studio is still a 32 bit program!

I have an i7 Surface Studio which runs 64 bit Windows 10 Pro with 32GB of RAM but it is total overkill for what I actually need. I have only one program, a mapping program written by me mainly in Basic4ppc , that needs 64 bits and that is to deal with some enormous bitmaps that are too big to address for 32 bit systems.

With only 2GB of RAM you have no need for a 64 bit OS and in fact, because of the larger size of 64 bit pointers you will probably end up with less usable RAM than you already have.

 

[NJDude]

We could argue this until kingdom comes, but my opinion is to move to newer/contemporary technology, keep up with the times, I haven't had a 32bit PC in a long time, actually, since I dropped XP and got Win 7, now I've been on Win 10 since it came out.

The "Consumer" side of things might be a little bit more mixed, but, on the "Corporate" side, good luck finding a 32bit machine.

You will have to also consider "Support", some manufacturers are phasing out support for 32bit, so, holding on to those systems has its drawbacks, the next update, service pack, drivers, software, etc might not include the hardware/software you currently have.

Overkill machine? HUMBUG!!! there's no such thing, that's Fake News.

 

[Cableguy]

I never felt the need, and I still don't, to upgrade to/buy a 64bit machine.
I was more curious than anything else.
Having my current needs in mind, I don't think I need to upgrade, since most of my usage is light B4J/A/R development and websufing.

Thanks to all who took the time...
@agraham , the surface pro is the machine that, if I had the means, I would buy without even considering the specs!

 

[Deleted member 103]

Hi @Cableguy ,

I can recommend you a used DELL Precision T3500, I have one at home myself.
At work, I'm a systems administrator in the CAX area, get the engineering for the DELL Precision T3620, but of course new.
With such a workstation you can not go wrong.

 

[agraham]

@agraham , the surface pro is the machine that, if I had the means, I would buy without even considering the specs!

It was the Surface Studio that I mentioned - but I just happen to have two Surface Pros as well. An original Surface Pro and a Surface Pro 4.

 

[wonder]

Once I installed Windows 7 64bit on a PC with only 4GB of RAM... it chocked to death.

Just for "being alive", Windows was consuming 3,8 GBs.

 

[sorex]

then you probably had some unwanted crap installed that ran in the background or not configured it optimally.

windows shouldn't use more than 1-1.5Gb if you disable stuff like prefetch or superfetch which preloads windows components even when you don't use them.
with ssd you don't have much benefit of it anyway only loss of a lot of memory.

@Cableguy: just add a second hand 2Gb dimm if there's still a slot left to give more room for windows (you can get up to 3.5 or 3.75Gb if I recall right depending on how much the gfx adapter might take since it doesn't have any memory of its own)

I also worked with a netbook for several months as I didn't have anything better back then and they're only good to read your (web)mail and do some webbanking.

Do compilation tasks is a lot slower since that's not their purpose.

Maybe it's more wise to look out for something more decent?