I am afraid I will have to disagree with you, drivers support on the MS world have improveded considerebly; and they are still the ones who have the largest base of hardware compatibility. 64 bit computing is the future and there are many website (such planetamd) that are dedicated to drivers to 64 bits architecture. I would not venture in using such OS with legacy hardware for sure OS since I would be asking for trouble. NT Kernel of Windows XP Prof. 64 has most of the advantages and improvements introduced with the Windows Vista kernel without all the overhead that comes along with Vista. I have being running Windows XP Pro. 64 in my desktop (an AMD 64 X2 3800) with windows xp pro. 64 and it is much better than the previous MS OSs I have used so far. For me windowx xp pro 64 ed. has an NT kernel with lots of improvements and more stability. I know that windows xp pro 64 was in large part test bed for the Vista Kernel (which are all a derivate from the original NT kernel). On the other side Windows Vista would be an power hungry OS that just don't justify itself and all the development time it took to be released. I bought  another laptop that comes with Vista Home and I don't like it all.  For a long time I used to consider Windows 2k Prof. as the better OS ever released by MS (better than the XP Prof), but now I would consider that new improvements with xp pro. 64 would compensate for it's more limited user interface, besides it has support for 64 computing. Yeah, I know that buying a retail version of MS OS was kind of stupid; but my sponsor bought it for me, and I committed one of the most stupid acts of my life in broken the seal of the box, otherwise I could go back to best buy and exchange it for something else. The ones I bought are all OEM version. There are people who like retail version and most likely they on ebay (I will try there). My sempron has an Albany core and it does not have  support for 64 bits instruction set (verified with cpuid, and linux /proc/cpuinfo). The turion that I bought is not an X2 and it comes with huge improvement in performance and a L2 Cache of 1MB, and generates far less heating (don't know if the bios of my notebook supports dual core). I called Acer asking for a Service Manual but they refuse to provide one arguing that it is proprietary stuff. thanks for your input, -pedro <div>On 4/27/07, Richard Houser <<a href="mailto:rick@divinesymphony.net">rick@divinesymphony.net</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Be careful with the driver support.  The last I recall, XP 64-bit was mostly a joke as almost no hardware manufacturers would support and as always, Microsoft Windows driver support tends to be a joke. Semprons can be 64-bit too, it just depends on which you get: <a href="http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/201">http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/201 </a>.  But, for a laptop, a Turion is probably a lot better bet (especially if you get an X2 chip). It's been a while, but somewhere around five years ago, the going rate for a full Windows XP Professional license was about 170 and dropped well under $140 shortly after (one of the major office stores' on-line branch, think it was Office Depot, so Computers4Sure).  If you need a copy of Windows, I would strongly recommend you try to look for OEM or CA copies instead.  Almost nobody pays retail (in fact, the big manufacturers pay something close to $10 per license). pdwald wrote: > Hello, > > I know that may not be right forum to announce it, but we all have to > deal with interoperability. I bought a retail version of windowx xp pro > for my notebooks, but I decided to upgrade the processor from a Sempron > (that is 32bits) to an AMD Turion 64 MT37 Lanscaster 2.0 1MB L2 and > ended up buying a copy of Windows xp prof. 64 edition since for me > Windows Vista is very much a resource hungry operating system. I paid > US$299 for the retail version ofr windows xp pro, but would be selling > it for US$239. If anyone is interested, please contact me. > -pedro > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > linux-user mailing list > <a href="mailto:linux-user@egr.msu.edu">linux-user@egr.msu.edu</a> > <a href="http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user">http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user </a> </blockquote></div>