I was going to write a post about the issues I had with Windows Vista 64-bit since just before Christmas when I got my new machine, however I just haven’t had many problems. When I installed I had no problems with drivers and all the software except one thing (no 64-bit support) has installed and run without problems so far.

I have found Vista 64-bit to be really stable and reliable, that’s not to say I am not eagerly awaiting SP1 to fix several annoying things with Vista, namely the copy/move file dialog. From what I have read of the changes for SP1, Vista will become a much more polished OS, just as SP1 and SP2 did for Windows XP.

I built my new AMD dual core machine when I got Vista 64-bit, so having no driver problems is most likely because all the hardware was new and was supported on Vista 64-bit.

Before I built my new machine I was trying to decide whether I’d jump to Vista 64-bit with all the horror stories I had heard, let alone the problems with Vista 32-bit. One of the reasons I decided to go with Vista 64-bit was that XP and Vista 32-bit only support 3GB of RAM and I wanted 4GB. There are countless other nice features like the search box in the start menu which make Vista in general a much more featured OS. However, I have no regrets with going to Vista 64-bit and would assume I’d have a just as good experience with Vista 32-bit and can only expect it to get better with the upcoming SP1 release.

Companies like Dell are currently selling PCs with 3GB of RAM running on Vista 32-bit. Computer manufacturers are now at the limit with the amount of memory they can put in a machine for Vista 32-bit, which means that support for Vista 64-bit in software becomes so much more important for ISVs. That means that all consumers will benefit from the improved 64-bit support throughout the software industry.