Vista 64-bit support

[jtzecher]

Greetings,

My computer just died unexpectedly last week so I am now shopping for a new one. For reasons I don't really want to get into (mostly wanting to stay in the mainstream), I am only looking at Windows machines (but I have nothing bad to say about the other options). I see a lot of machines that come with a 64 bit version of Vista that I briefly see is supposed to support 32 bit applications. I have yet to read the fine print on that statement.

My question is really about whether VAST (current versions and/or BETA) will run on 64 bit Vista machines or should I opt for the XP downgrade? I have heard many horror stories about Vista that I am really tempted to go with XP to avoid the horror. However, I usually go between 5 to 6 years between new computer purchases so I'm leaning towards going with Vista just so I know that I'll have a "supported" OS loaded on my machine for its foreseeable lifetime.

I look forward to hearing any feedback. Thank you.

[marten]

I also bought a new system - quad core and 8 GB RAM - and installed Vista Ultimate 32 and Ubuntu AMD64. After the interesting new phase of a new operating system I have to admit, that it does not give me any new features or new stuff I really needed. Then I had a totally crash with Vista and was not able to start or repair it and then I switched back to Windows XP.

I use Ubuntu mainly for development - e.g. running Windows using VirtualBox (where I do not need high video performance). The native XP installation is used for playing around with quad core stuff and video (etc). The Linux VA stuff is running under Ubuntu AMD based systems - due to an installed 32bit subsystem.

Actually I would love to work under Ubuntu and VASmalltalk for most of the time, but VASmalltalk under Linux does not make fun - it works, but it does not make fun.

To reduce costs I did not buy a 3GHZ machine quad-core, but only a 2.2 AMD GHZ quad-core system and I notice, that most of my Smalltalk programs are running slower than on my 3GHz single-core machine at work - but actually this was expected, but it shows a far-ahead (?) limit of Smalltalk systems, not scalable on multi-core machines without radical programming changes.

Thats some "feelings" I have around that ...

[wembley]

VA Smalltalk 7.5.2 is certified for Vista 64-bit. Earlier versions of VA Smalltalk will very likely run there also since we made no changes specifically for 64-bit, but we have not tested earlier versions on Vista 64-bit.

[jtzecher]

Many thanks.