XP Pro 64 bit

[castledragon]

I was going to be installing this OS instead of Vista. What are some of the pros and cons of it?

 

[hennessy1]

Driver support is not as uptodate as vista x64 but overall good stable os built on windows server 2003 kernal. MS tech support for product will not be as good as vista if thats a concern.

 

[kylef]

I ran it on my main system at home from April 2005 until January 2007 when Vista 64 was released. It was a great OS, although it could be difficult at times to find drivers. I had to ditch my older sound card, for example.

Frankly though, if you're going to buy a retail OS, I'd buy Vista. It will last longer, and you can tweak it to perform very well by disabling features like the search indexer and defender.

 

[Continuity28]

Definitely the best version of XP.

That's my opinion.

Driver support is better than people give it credit for.

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: Continuity28


Driver support is better than people give it credit for.

If there are no XP64 drivers for your device... there never will be. But you should only run into problems if you have some older hardware or something that wasn't really mainstream.

And there are a few other annoyances like Filezilla not working properly. But there is enough stuff out there that you can find what you need.

 

[rchiu]

Do your research, if have the driver support, it's a good OS. If not, then it's useless to you. I have to agree with most people here. If you want to go 64 bit, go with Vista. The main reason is Microsoft's certification program with Vista. In order to get Vista capable approval from MS, apps/hardware makes have to show their product supports for both 32bit/64bit. That will make driver support going forward much better for Vista 64.

 

[videopho]

My 2nd rig is x64 and this is the 3rd year and counting.
I've never had any issue finding drivers for it.
Just one caution on the wireless adapter though.
It's very flaky at best.

 

[mechBgon]

Another shortcoming of XP Pro x64 is that it's OEM only. No Retail-licensed version available.