[lug] recommendation for a 64bit laptop

[Gary Hodges]

Sean Reifschneider wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2007 at 05:25:50PM -0600, Kevin Kempter wrote:
>> I'm thinking about getting a 64bit laptop so I can run 64bit FC5/FC6 however I 
>> must have wireless working.  Any suggestions?
> 
> I tend to avoid 64-bit unless the system has 4GB or more of RAM, and even
> then I avoid it unless a single process needs access to more than 2GB of
> RAM at a slice.  Things like drivers having issues, Flash not being
> available native (you can get it working via using a 32-bit browser),
> etc...
> 
> You do realize there won't be any performance improvements, correct?  One
> MySQL benchmark I saw actually showed a slight decrease on 64-bit.

This was not my experience, at least with IDL.  I have a new 64 bit 
machine with 2GB RAM.  I initially installed Kubuntu 64 and 64 bit IDL. 
  I forget the exact times, but one of my programs ran in about 10 
minutes.  For other reasons, I installed 32 bit Kubuntu on this machine 
and the same program takes about twice as long to run.  I've only 
noticed a difference with IDL.