XP 64

I have been using XP64 at home for several months. I have only run into 2 issues. One was a showstopper and the other just bothered me very badly.

The showstopper - my printer is a Canon i850. I love this thing. It is awesome, but the company behind it is not. There are no 64bit drivers for this thing. I tried tons of different drivers and nothing would work. I found a program that will act like a printer and you just print to it and it will create a pdf. It is free with banners or pay for it to lose the banners.

The second issue - I hate the zip program built-into windows. Very, very limited in it's ability. I had been using UltimateZip exclusively for many years. Well, it doesn't work correctly in the 64bit shell. I can't right-click on a set of files to zip them with ultimatezip. Frustrating, but not a showstopper.

Now for the good news. The install of XP64 was the sweetest install of any Micro$oft product on the planet. Hit go and let it rock. Drivers for everything installed automatically (well, except for my printer). Remember the 'Hit F2 (or is it F6?) for the third party raid or scsi driver in the beginning of XP32? That is gone. My SATA drives worked without having to install a 3.5" drive to install those extra drivers. Very, very nice. Micro$oft learned a lot from LINUX on this one - MAKE THE INSTALL EASY!!!

I read a ton of horror stories about drivers, drivers, drivers... maybe it went so well for me because my computer was brand new with all new hardware... who knows. I would say with a bit of confidence that if you are planning to go with 64bit computing, my only concern would be to make sure your printer is supported!

background on the Warhorse: Shuttle SN25P nVidia nforce4

2gb ram big nVidia GeForce card 250gb SATA -3 etc., etc., blah, blah, blah :~)>

I have been running Windows XP Pro x64 Edition for just about 6 months now. I have 8G of installed memory. I have run Solidworks 2005 and

2006 in 32 bit mode with no problems at all. I have also used the x64 Beta version of Solidworks 2006 as well with no problems.

As far as network and other software issues, I really didn't have too many problems. I did have difficulty with printer drivers for x64 as well as with initially upgrading to an x64 version of Symantec Anti Virus. I have been very please with the switch over.

I do mostly nonlinear FEA so my major reason for going to x64 was for the performance increases that the 64 bit OS would provide.

Bob Mac wrote:

I briefly tried it when I received a new machine, but I had to remove it because I couldn't get to our big plotter, and I also couldn't get into our PDM software. Either of those issues was enough to kill it for me for the time being.

WT

Arlan,

Do you still have to install RAID drivers prior to install of the 64 bit OS? If so, how was that done?

Aar> Bob Mac wrote:

In my case, I did not have to install the 3rd party RAID drivers prior to the install of the O/S. It would appear that these drivers are FINALLY included with the O/S!

I have been a long-time anti-micro$oft person, but I think they finally are on the right track - at least so far with this 64 bit stuff.

Arlan, check out primopdf.com - free, pretty compatible, and no banners to ignore.

Diego

"I found a program that will act like a printer and you just print to it and it will create a pdf. It is free with banners or pay for it to lose the banners."

Bob,

Watch out for 3rd Party Applications that haven't been compiled for 64X applications. Our PDM system (DBWorks) hasn't been ported over to 64X yet. SW2007 will not recognize it as an Add-In. Will be running 32X version of SW\DBWorks on our 64X machines until such time as software will "play nice"

Len

Bob Mac wrote:

Thanks guys, it looks like it will be worthwhile changing to XP64 and I note your warnings. Now all I gotta do is convince the boss!

• snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com:

I use WinRAR 3.5d which works fine with Winxp x64...

No, it's not. The installation procedure is completely _identical_ to the one for 32bit Windowsxp, and this includes the "press F6 to add some driver" message. The only difference during install is that xp x64 knows more newer hardware since it's around 4 years younger than 32bit xp, but that's all.

I really can't see how Microsoft "learned from Linux" (what can they learn from it, Linux usually has more issues with hardware than Windows). The fact that xp x64 recognized your SATA disks while 32bit xp did not is probaby because the x64 version is much younger. Please tell me how this has something to do with Linux...

And your TV card, or your IDE chipset, or tons of other hardware where there is no x64 driver for...

Unless you have more than 4GB of RAM there is no reason to move to xp x64. especially since even with 64bit Windows the 2GB/3GB memory limitation for 32bit programs is still there...

Benjamin

Awesome! That is great! You are so uber cool!

OK, I didn't make myself clear enough - the REQUIREMENT to hit F6 is not there because of the 64bit version of windowsxp has the drivers in it already. Thank you for pointing out that I am a dumbass. I am sure no one else noticed. You really blew my cover.

Arlan p.s. I guess you have never installed a linux distro. Poor kid...

• snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com:

Well, that's Usenet. Be prepared that if you post nonsense that someone might correct you. Don't play with fire if you can't stand the heat. If you feel offended just because I said that you posted BS (which it was) then you have to live with that.

I did, but your point (saying MS learned something from Linux because xp x64 already comes with drivers for your hardware) still is very silly. Of course you never thought about that a operating system like 32bit xp which came out around 5 years ago can't have drivers for hardware that came out after it. And of course you never tried to install a 5 year old Linux distro on a modern computer, otherwise you'd have recognized that Linux won't work with most of its hardware. What a surprise that operating systems can't know about hardware that is younger than the OS version itself and that xp x64 (which is abit over one year old) supports newer hardware than 32bit xp...

Benjamin

I can't handle the heat. So long usenet! I am out!

Arlan