Hi, To answer your question, I recently moved from 32 bit to 64 bit Vista. The most notable is the speed which Java, IB TWS runs. Especially shut down , used to take 12 seconds now takes 2. Start up is much faster too. TC2000 is about the same with no notable difference. Can't comment on TS. I would do it. Having the extra 700 MB to cache seems to make a difference in performance. ( I have 4 Gb RAM and 4 GB readyboost on a SD). I had one minor driver issue with an OEM driver an controlling screen brightness. Found a workaround though. I beleive Vista 64 bit is superior to 32 bit Vista. Seems to run with better performance and less thrashing all around. Most 32 bit apps don't seem to care. The OS runs in 64 bit mode and don't forget that is a lot of the processing being done. Apps sit atop the OS. Had only one problem so far and that was with screen drawing with MS Streets 2008. Again found a work around. Seeing as I trade everyday, having TWS run much faster has been very much worth it. Also got my boot time down to about 20 seconds using this command, runs as an admin: Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks defrag -b %SystemDrive% Of course this works in 32 bit also. Overall just like a stock chart things change. 64 bit Vista has come a long way in the last 12 months. Soon it will be a standard, and it is about time! OF COURSE, your driver situation will be the determining factor. I would check the driver availability, esp Video first. I love the faster peformance and the fast boot and shutdown. TWS-Java is a pig and this seems to have tamed it. From starting the machine to trading in about 2-3 minutes is pretty nice! Dean PS: I have worked with PCs since 1984, including with Adobe and MS for 15 years, so I have *some* knowledge. PPS: The one thing that is also critical is the lack of Bit Rot you get with XP. XP requires clean installs after a while. It is like the registry and DLLs gets tangled up and XP performance degrades over time. Vista on the otherhand is MUCH better. I ran 32 bit Vista for 14 months and had about the same boot time and performance as when I started. With XP it would last about 6-9 months tops before a clean install was needed.
I use my Vista machines for trading without any problems. However, I'm not using any old software and the Vista software was factory installed with the new machines. All software are Vista compatible and I do alot of multi-media work on my Vista. Been a Vista user for about 6 months. Also, I do have XP pro on my backup system (a few years old) without any problems too. Simply, I'm a very happy Vista Ultimate and XP Pro user. P.S. I did purchase new stuff that was Vista compatible to go with my Vista system to prevent any incompatibility problems (e.g. router, printer et cetera). Thus, my XP Pro is setup with it's own stuff (e.g. router, printer et cetera). Mark
Vista64 would be a much safer choice than XP64 ... because XP64 is an orphan. And never a popular or pretty one. Vista64 and (better) Windows Server 2008 64 are good performers.
I have Vista, the simplest cheapest edition available, running on a workstation mobo and a processor that is a couple editions back, it's fine.. I went with Vista because Leo LaPorte started saying it was good to go. Rootkits don't work with Vista, that is one thing to the positive. Windows will always be hackable if you open anything at all but behind a whitelisting firewall for business purposes it's great...... I'm shopping for a MAC for general stuff
Ugh, building a PC. I only got my A+ certification so I could upgrade my own machines, but I hate touching other people's boxes. I buy off-the-shelf and improve from there. That way I get a warranty, and with my usage, the warranty usually gets me a new computer every three years for free.
Luto- That was an excellent reply, I appreciate it. I think I'll give Vista 64 a try since I do have all new hardware, and I'll test out all my apps on it and if it works for a week then I'll stick with it, if I run into issues I'll go back to XP Pro. Sounds like Vista 64 has shored up a bit. I mean with Bill Gates new informative commercial and all....
Shared my Vista experience on a Q6600 machine with 4GB RAM and ATI Radeon HD 3750 videocard here: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2067016#post2067016 But that's 32bit Vista... Don't know about 64-bit but guess if hardware drivers are compatible the rest shouldn't be much of an issue. P. S. Must say that I am far from being MS fan and use mostly Linux, so my view on Vista never was positively biased.
I bought a PC so I could open the box, push the button, and just use the darn thing and it's been nothing but grief. The OS is very unstable. If you open two applications at the same time that use a lot of memory, like your trading platform and Quicken (this is something the machine should be able to handle) it freezes, flashes, and occasionally shuts down. The OS locks up when it goes through windows updates, wrong DLL's get loaded, others are missing. Stick with XP. Do NOT touch this OS -- it's total garbage!
never had any of these problems with Vista. You need to learn how to use the computer, beyond pushing the buttons...