[dba-Tech] 64 vs. 32 Bit

Hello Arthur and Jon,
I am currently thinking of buying some hardware, but not sure which OS to go
for.

Regardless of which OS and hardware, I intend to include a few VM machines,
so I may bey 6 or even 8 GB ram.

If I buy a laptop, will I install Vista 64 bit Ultimate, and then put my VM
platform on that
Or wil I try to installed Windows 2003 or even Windows 2008 Server on the
laptop and use that as the VM platform

I may alternately buy a desktop, so act as a server, so in that case, I
guess I will install Win 2K8 and add my VM machines to it freely.

But I am nervous about 64 bit OS and comaptability problems I am sure to
encounter.

On thing that is clear is that if I wish to use from that 3 GB then I have
to make the switch to 64 bit.  I suppose we are all going to do that over
the next 12 - 18 months.

I am thinking if the 50 or so apps that I currnetly run on my 32 bit laptop,
will they mostly run on a 64 bit OS?

or alternately will i have to have a 32 bit OS running as a VM within the
laptop?  Is anyone doing that?  ie, runing 64 bit OS, with Vista or XP32 bit
running smootly and older apps all working happily inside the VM

Thanks for any thoughts you may have


MArk



2009/6/17 Arthur Fuller <fuller.artful at gmail.com>

> Yes, the 32 bit version can only consume 3GB of your RAM, so to use it all
> you have to go to the 64 bit version.
>
> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 4:56 PM, Jon Tydda <jon at tydda.plus.com> wrote:
>
> > No, XP 32 bit will use the processor (I've got one in my desktop), but
> > you'll need 64 bit to use all that RAM.
> >
> >
> > Jon
> >
> >
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