Be careful jumping to 64 Bit
A few months ago, I decided that it was time for me to upgrade my desktop PC. Unfortunately, my knowledge of all-things-hardware has been reduced to a simple rule: if the numbers are higher, it must be faster and better.
Don't get me wrong, I used to know all the ins-and-outs. I was down with SIMMs, DDIMS, EDO, busses, this, that -- but they all seem to have gone the way of the telegraph. No matter, the stuff now makes much more sense -- you got your 5400, 7200, and 10000 RPM hard drives with 66, 100, 133, etc transfer rates. PC100, 133, 150 and 2400, 2600, 3200 RAM modules. The bigger, the better.
So naturally, I picked up a AMD 3000 64Bit CPU and an ECS 755-A Motherboard. That's right, twice as many bits as my old processor. I popped the new components in and fired 'er up, all excited to be cruizin' in 64.
Just imagine my disappointment when my upgrade didn't end up doubling my speed. In fact, it didn't even produce make that big a difference from my old AMD 2400 processor. But then I actually thought about it -- software needs to be specially written to utilize the double-wide instructions. That's probably what Windows XP 64 Bit would come in.
Finally, just this past weekend, I popped in a new SATA hard drive (it had bigger numbers, so it must be better) and installed the RC1 of XP 64 Bit. And ooooh boy -- it sure did fly. The context (right-click) menus showed up instantly (unlike on the 32 bit OS). Of course, it may have something to do with the fact that no software was installed ... so I thought I'd correct that and install some software.
And that's where I gave up. All of my software exists as ISO images on a network fileshare. I mount them as virtual CD drives and just go from there (you would be amazed how insanely fast VS.NET installs that way). Because drivers need to be specially written to operate on Windows 64, none of the virtual CD (D-Tools, ImageDrive, or even the MS one). Sure, I could go to the bookshelf and get the physical CD ... but if I'm already having trouble at this point, I'm not sure if it's worth learning what else won't work down the line.
So, if you're considering upgrading to 64 bit ... don't do what I did ... think about it first ;-).