Vista 32 bit vs 64 bit

In My Humble Opinion
1

My old XP laptop has died, and it looks like I’m stuck with Vista. A complicating factor is that the VPN I use sometimes does not run on 64 bit Vista, and won’t for a long time if ever.

I’ve got two options

  1. Buy a 32 bit Vista machine. Plenty seem out there with 3 Gig of memory and decent disks. I can run VPN.

  2. Get a 64 bit Vista (4 Gig memory) and do one of the following.

  • run my vpn on an X windows Linux emulator. This is claimed as a possible solution, but no one has said they’ve done it yet

  • Get my XP laptop fixed, give it to my wife for working outside the house, and use it the few times I need the VPN. There is a cheap computer repair place near me.
    So, any opinions on 32 bit vs 64 bit Vista? (I know XP is better.) Some stuff I’ve seen claim 64 bit Vista is more stable. Any incompatibility problems with old software? I’ve seen people claim the old driver problem is pretty well solved also.

I need this for a trip next week, so Dell is out. The one Dell machine I saw at Best Buys got bad reviews and seemed underpowered.
TIA

2

If you take a listen to about the last 10 minutes or so of this podcast, Paul Thurott goes into why Vista 64 is better for just about everything. I don’t know if he mentions VPN, but he does give a pretty complete rundown on everything, as I recall.

3

Thanks, will take a listen. The VPN problem is from Cisco - I can’t blame Microsoft for that one.

4

Did you double check with cisco? There might be a vista beta. That’s what we’re running on.

5

This is supported from work. My understanding is that there is a 64 bit version, but it requires new hardware which is expensive and out of the question for the while. I found a similar statement at the Cisco site, actually. Which version are you using?