Well, posting after a long time. I've been busy in multiple things over the last few days - including being involved in the Windows Server 2008 Roadshow, talking to GoI officials on processes, etc.

During this time, I also upgraded my system to 4GB RAM and a 250GB hard disk. I went ahead and installed Windows Vista Ultimate x64 on it since my XPS M1710 is EMT64 enabled. The installation went off without a hitch. In fact I was pleasantly surprised to find that Vista detected and installed my WiFi card automatically - something it didn't do in the 32-bit version! Anyway, I downloaded the latest Vista 64-bit drivers for all the hardware components from Dell's site and installed all of them to get the maximum performance and features. (It is always a good idea to replace the stock MS drivers with specific drivers for your hardware to get the benefits of whatever it is that you're using. MS supplies a fairly basic set of drivers, in any case.)

Once that was done, the time to install all my favorite software came up. So I went ahead and installed a bunch of them. Here's my list and comments on each:

• Office 2007: No separate x64 edition but works just fine. No noticeable difference between x32 and x64
• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition x64: Now this is a native 64-bit version and installs fine. You need to download and install the SQL Server 2005 SP2 x64 as well. But good to see that even the developer edition supports x64
• Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition: No separate x64 edition but it does install the .Net Framework x64 and a couple of other x64 components - so at least it's aware of being in a 64-bit environment
• Raxco PerfectDisk 8.0: Got an RD deal on this and have been using it for a long time. Simply the best defragger out there. And the best part is that it comes with a 64-bit edition as well. You need to extract the installer file into a folder (if you have Winrar installed, simply right click the setup file and select Extract to...). Once extracted, you will see an x64 folder which contains a setup.exe. Simply run this to install the 64-bit version
• Daemon Tools 4: Well, this claims to be 64-bit too. But there is only a single download that says that it will run the correct version (x32/x64) by detecting it. However this doesn't seem to be the case as the Daemon Tools process running on my machine is the 32-bit version
• AVG AntiVirus Professional: If you need a 64-bit enabled antivirus there are only a very few choices. I tried Avast! Free Home Edition but didn't like it. Then found out that AVG has 64-bit extensions in its Professional edition. Since I've been using AVG Free for ages and love the fact that it is very non-intrusive and takes up very little resources, I immediately purchased a two year subscription of the Pro edition. And yes, it does have a 64-bit scanner as well
• WinRAR: Sadly no 64-bit version of this. I did think that they would release one since the amount of computation that a 64-bit version could do is more than a 32-bit one and compression algorithms might benefit from it.

So far the 64-bit adventure has been nice. Here are some other observations and comments that I've had to face:

1. My machine shows only 3326 MB instead of the full 4096 MB  - even in the BIOS. For all those who tell me that 64-bit is the answer, well not entirely. The motherboard also needs to support a concept called "Memory Hole Remapping" - a way to move the address space used by peripheral devices (such as video card, etc.) into a space above the physically installed RAM. On my machine the motherboard doesn't support this - so the BIOS will always show a "hole" in the available RAM. For instance, if I upgrade my RAM to 8GB, both the BIOS and Vista will happily use 7326 MB of RAM. Vista 32-bit would not be able to utilize even this much.
2. Software developers need to pay attention to their installers as well. Even software that are 64-bit usually have 32-bit installers. So when the install starts up, the default folder to which they try to get installed to is "Program Files (x86)" rather than "Program Files" - which on Vista x64 is the folder for 64-bit programs.
3. Now that many people are on the 64-bit route even on desktops and laptops, it makes sense to have 64-bit versions of popular software. Hopefully 2008 will be the year where we see more 64-bit software coming out.