Hi Director, yeah I upgraded to 64 bit when I built this PC...I...

Hi Director, yeah I upgraded to 64 bit when I built this PC...I only put in 4 gigs of ram and usually have 3.5 gig available while operating...the system rarely goes over 50% usage now anyway.

I think 64 bit is becoming pretty much the standard now isn't it? I am led to believe it is more secure than 32 bit...to do with digital signature requirements...though I am not all over that!

Quite a few of the programs I run are 32 bit only and don't appear to come in 64 bit, fortunately they will run on 64bit as Windows 7 Pro will run both.

Windows 7 is a pain in that it does not support a few older printer drivers, I have an excellent HP multifunction that I have had to run through a "Virtual PC" as Windows XP to use the scan facility.
I guess windows 8 & 10 would be the same.
(though I had to buckle and buy a new bigger better multifunction unit as when running the Virtual PC I could only scan 5 pages at a time for some reason)

I think Microsoft knew they hadn't backed a winner with the feedback from Windows 8, most people hated it mainly for the touch facility and lack of "start" button I believe. They had "fixes" available very soon after release.

I have seriously thought about setting a PC up with Linux to try it out. I have a couple of spare chassis here and some bits and pieces so could knock one up quite quickly, but I also know I could run an additional hard drive with MS on one and Linux on the other...time has been my enemy more than anything. I use a couple of external drives currently.

Maybe I should just put a spare hard drive into my docker and run it from there to get a feel for it?