So, you've got your new computer, but you still need to pickup an operating system. You head over to your local computer store (or open a web browser, if you have another computer), and start looking. You notice that the latest version of Windows ships with 32bit and 64bit. What do you do?
If you don't know the difference, then you are not the first. Many people today would benefit from 64 bit, but simply do not know it exists, or what it is. So let's take a look.
Over the last few years, we have been reaching the peak of what computer applications can do. You may have been using a computer to encode your latest, money-making, award-winning, advertising campaign, but found it takes hours to finish. You may be working on a vital spreadsheet, and find that all the numbers appear to slow your computer down. This can come down to the type of operating system you are running.
32 bit operating systems use data units that are sized 32 bits, or 4 bytes (always divide bits by 8 to get bytes), These allow for an amount of memory to be directly addressed - which in 32bit mode is a maximum of 4GB. Some of this memory will then be used by your video card, and other parts by other system processes.
Now when you go buy a computer, some machines come with 6GB (or more) of memory. How is this possible? Well this comes down to 64bit architecture; which using the same logic as last time means 64bits, or 8bytes. This allows for 264, or to save your calculator skills, that's 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes of memory. Quite a lot!
This memory can then be addressed for use in an application made to support 64bits. You can then store a lot more information in direct memory (which is super quick to access), and potentially speed up the work you're doing.
So, as we move away from the old days of 32bit (like we did with Windows 95/98 and 16bit), we're going to need an operating system that is built from the ground up to support 64bit, and, among others, Windows 7 fits the bill. With 7, this support has not just been thrown in for the 'geeks' to play with, but is being marketed generally across the market. So what better day to get in on the future, that with your new computer and operating system?