Windows XP Pro x64

Next on the agenda for review is Windows XP Professional for those of us with an x64 architecture. You may have seen the warnings: "You may want to upgrade your operating system to make use of your 64-bit cpu." Etc, etc, blah blah blah. Well, I thought it was just a bunch of crap. Being a computer science major, of course, I knew it wasn't, but how much of a performance increase could it really be? Let me be the first to tell you, the difference was like night and having your eyes burned out with the most intense light in the universe.

My computer not only runs faster (understatement) but it is also more stable than I have ever seen it. It blazes through every task. Nothing slows it down. Memory management is the best I've ever seen, and although I haven't been using it very long, I really don't want to go back.

I'll eventually have to rollback, however, for a few reasons:

1. The trial only last 120 days.
   
2. I don't have the money to throw around on a new OS.
3. I really don't like throwing money I do spend on an OS at Microsoft.
4. For now, I'm stuck with the one and only crappy version of MS MCE 2005.

Yeah, seems I won't be permanently switching to a 64-bit OS for a couple year and score now until the Vista reign begins. It really kind of makes me sad now that I have seen what I am missing.

Although driver support isn't quite there, and of course programs and games haven't been optimized for the 64-bit platform, the next question in your mind is "How is the backwards compatibility?"... or maybe not. Maybe you haven't even thought of that. But thanks to M$' WoW32 Emulator, they can all run on the new OS. For you HL players, Valve has released a 64-bit version of its engine via steam. Our friend (not literal) Illrigger further down the post believes that the emulator eats up system resources like Aunt Bertha on Thanksgiving, but I would have to question his cunningness as a computer person if he is experiencing problems. I found Vx64 to half my resources in most cases. I just thought that you, the reader, should hear both sides of the opinionated story.

As for the 64-bit HL, I'll soon be jumping on that bandwagon and I will post an update on how that goes.

Microsoft Windows XP x64 | 78% Approval
Pros: FAST, stable | Cons: Lacking Support for now.