{"id":138,"date":"2008-09-30T12:42:05","date_gmt":"2008-09-30T12:42:05","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-09-30T12:54:50","modified_gmt":"2008-09-30T12:54:50","slug":"x64_computing_on_campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/isg\/?p=138","title":{"rendered":"x64 Computing on Campus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of our OU Administrators was recently asking for feedback on using 64 bit versions of Windows. From what I have read it seems that x64 computing has truly arrived and I thought it was worth sharing my experiences with the 64-bit version of Windows Vista.<\/p>\n<p>Previously use of Windows XP x64 edition and even Vista x64 to some extent was restricted to a handful of users with special hardware and dependant on special or modified versions of software and drivers.<br \/>\nThis is certainly no longer the case (at least in my experience).  I&#8217;ve  been running Windows Vista x64 on a <a href=\"http:\/\/h10010.www1.hp.com\/wwpc\/uk\/en\/sm\/WF05a\/12454-12454-296719-296721-296721-3429268.html\">HP xw4600<\/a>, Core 2 Quad with 8GB RAM and have never seen anything like it!<\/p>\n<p>The performance increase given by the extra 4GB RAM which x64 allows is immense.  I am able to run multiple Virtual machines 1 or more GB of RAM each without any noticeable reduction in performance. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also had no issues with mainstream software compatibility, Vista x64 seems to take running x86 applications in its stride. The software I am running includes Adobe Flash Player , 7-Zip, Adobe Reader, Apple QuickTime, Office 2007, Shockwave, ServiceCenter, Paint.NET, VMWare Workstation and CDBurnerXP. <\/p>\n<p>Paul Thurrott wrote an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.winsupersite.com\/showcase\/winvista_1yr_x64.asp\">interesting article<\/a> describing his good experiences with Vista x64 nearly a year ago and there is little doubt that things have improved even more since then.<\/p>\n<p>If you or any of your users need high performance computing then I would say that Vista x64 is a safe bet. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.crucial.com\/uk\/\">current low memory prices<\/a> may also mean that existing x64 capable hardware with less than 4GB and x86 operating systems may be candidates for upgrade.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wit.ncl.ac.uk\/blog_files\/James\/x64.jpg\" alt=\"x64\" title=\"\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of our OU Administrators was recently asking for feedback on using 64 bit versions of Windows. From what I have read it seems that x64 computing has truly arrived and I thought it was worth sharing my experiences with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/isg\/?p=138\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4740,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,22,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-vista","category-vmware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/isg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/isg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/isg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/isg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4740"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/isg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/isg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/isg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/isg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/isg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}