As I noted in my previous entry, I finally made the jump to 64-bit Windows Vista as my full-time operating and development environment. Since the move coincided with the transition to a new notebook PC I was able to test the waters without any real risk (my old system remained intact in the event I needed to beat a hasty retreat back to the 32-bit world). After all, the web is rife with negative reviews of the 6 As I noted in my previous entry, I finally made the jump to 64-bit Windows Vista as my full-time operating and development environment. Since the move coincided with the transition to a new notebook PC I was able to test the waters without any real risk (my old system remained intact in the event I needed to beat a hasty retreat back to the 32-bit world).After all, the web is rife with negative reviews of the 64-bit Vista variant, some from fairly reputable sources. Many cite a lack of hardware device drivers and a high degree of general application incompatibility as showstoppers. So I was understandably curious how my own transition would unfold. Would my new notebook’s major devices be supported? Would it balk at some irreplaceable application or tool? Would it even install?It’s been six days since I first spun-up the Vista 64-bit installation CD and I’m pleased to report that I’ve encountered exactly *2* incompatibilities – this after recreating almost my entire runtime and development environment. The culprits: An unsigned device driver (fanio.sys from the i8kfangui application) and the Office Web Components from Microsoft Office 2003 (they’re 32-bit only and can’t be called from my ASP.NET web apps under 64-bit IIS). The latter is a bit of a pain since it means I’ll have to test some parts of my code under a virtual machine. However, it’s also a good opportunity to revisit those offending components and dump a legacy charting object that is being phased out anyway. Hello, ChartFX?Otherwise, it’s been smooth sailing. In fact, the overall runtime experience has been far superior to 32-bit Vista. For example, multitasking – especially under heavy loads with SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and several VMware virtual machines chewing-up the available RAM – is much smoother under Vista 64-bit. And, of course, I haven’t experience anything even resembling a crash or hang (the advantage of mandatory signed drivers and a more robust kernel architecture).The one other downside to 64-bits: The code base is a bit “fatter” overall. Under Vista 32-bit my base OS working set hovered around 400-500MB, whereas Vista 64-bit is well into to 700-800MB range (in each case, 2GB of RAM was available to Windows). This code bloat, in turn, is putting a crimp on my multi-VM test scenarios, so I’m making one more concession in order to establish Vista 64-bit as my primary residence: Upgrading to 4GB of RAM. Software DevelopmentSmall and Medium Business