I've seen it explained that it's pretty much useless since there are very few apps that are 64 bit, thus the decision to have 32 bit boot kernel as the default. Basically, you get no advantage from a 64 bit boot kernel at the moment - of course, poly might get some advantage in the lab. Most of us would never know or notice a difference.

It's for extension and hardware compatibility. 64 bit is no advantage for most users for now.

Here's a pretty good explanation.

yeah, especially if you're a VISTA user !!

I think even with Win7, MS will be behind the curve on 64 bit from what I understand, you choose 32 or 64 but can't have both like with SL ! Is this an accurate conclusion?

IF you upgrade to 32 bit now for compatibility, and then later need 64 bit for newer programs, you have to upgrade again ??

well, it screwed up the SMTP settings on every computer in the house. i've spent hours trying to get it all back. actually, i got my mac.com account back quickly and my wife's gmail, but neither of us can send using our main university accounts. quite a big thread on the Apple forums about it. hmmmm.

Now when I start my MBP in SL, the fan makes it sound like Thunderbird 2 getting ready for takeoff - cue the palm trees...

I'm having to reinstall my OKI B410 drivers, which the OS update threw away. Let's hope they're SL-friendly, since they're v1.0.0.

Update: "To use the OKI B410 drivers, you need to install Rosetta." ARAGH! Time for a trip to the OKI website.

Update: I'm screwed for the moment - no update to the driver (a PPC-only driver for a current printer model? You're kidding) and it's Bank Holiday Monday over here, so no info until tomorrow. Oh well, back to the HP inkjet.

Update: it gets better - my HP Business Inkjet 1100 is 'not supported' either. Dammit. And SL won't let me run the 10.5 driver installer.

Oh well, serves me right for not waiting - paperless office for the moment, save a shrub at least.

I emailed OKI in the US, as the UK office is on holiday today - their response is priceless:

No, x64 runs most 32 bit apps just fine. Actually they were ahead of Apple when they released Vista, Snow Leopard catches up. 64 bit XP sucked though.

I can count the number of old programs I've had trouble with on x64 Vista on one hand, with several fingers left over. There's also better security (those old 32 bit viruses won't execute), as DEP (data execution prevention) is automatically executed on the processor with 64 bit apps. Honestly I'm disappointed there would be a 32 bit Win 7.

What you have to remember is today's desktop 64 bit processors aren't really true 64 bit as they'll execute 32 bit code. So, you can run x64 and still run 32bit applications, they just run as 32 bit code - although many run faster than in a 32 bit OS as the code can be double executed.

Here's a pretty good article if you want to learn more

Now I feel like a twat - after all the brouhaha about SL not supporting Rosetta any more, no-one told me that it was actually still available as an optional install. So now I have a working OKI printer again - though some of the options no longer work, because:



And I still can't install the old HP drivers, for the same reason. I've got the BI 1100 using the 2200 driver, with similar loss of functionality, but at least it prints.

well sorry about that pad . . . if i'd better understood i could have told you that Rosetta is an optional install. glad you've got it mostly working now.

I wasn't directing that "no-one told me" at anyone here - I meant more that the absence of Rosetta support in SL had been blasted all over the internet while SL was getting ready for release, so I'm really surprised I didn't see it mentioned anywhere that this had changed.

I'm just paying the usual price for early adoption. Still no word from OKI UK, but I expect they've got a few emails to reply to this week . And I hope at some point there'll be open source drivers for 'deprecated' HP printers in SL, since HP won't be providing them.