Laptop with Core2duo is that 64bit?
 

Isn't the Core 2 Duo processor in our laptop 64bit? It's the t7200. We bought the laptop with XP Media Center 2005 on it. With all the talk of 64 bit going on here, I started wondering if XP MCE 2005 is even capable of 64 bit or not?

I'm pretty sure that all Core 2 chips are 64-bit enabled, however, I don't believe that Windows MCE is available in a 64-bit version. Even if it were, the drivers would probably not be there making the system mostly useless. If you really want to go 64-bit, Vista should offer 64-bit MC capabilities.

yep - all core2s are 64 bit, but its usually disabled by default.
Unless you really have a need to activly address more than 4gb of RAM at a time its probably not worth it to run a 64 bit version of Windows. All drivers are different so a lot of stuff doesnt work- or at least easily.

If we went with Vista would it be worth it. The previous poster said Vista is 64 bit capable.

why do you need it?
 

if you have to ask if you need it, you wont need it.

:D :p

Be careful and do some research.
64bit Vista is very different than 32bit! 64bit vista includes a requirement for kernel drivers to be signed. Thats an expensive and long process for developers and its doubtful that you'll see HP shelling out the time and money to have the drivers for a deskjet 650 to be signed.

What that means practically is that a lot of devices are not going to work, at least right away, with 64bit vista.

Unless they've got a 32-bit driver layer for 64-bit vista, they also need to have the drivers recompiled. We use XP 64-bit at my work, and driver availability is a bit of an issue, and there's no signing requirement... just a requirement for 64-bit compatible drivers.

Windows Vista is available in both 32 bit and 64 bit editions, but they are separate versions, so you have to decide which version you want to use and then stick with it.

As the others have said, the 64 bit version appears to have no real advantages over the 32 bit version for a majority of normal users (even if your processor is 64 bit capable), and can actually have some distinct disadvantages.

MS specifically chose to make some significant security changes in 64 that they could not make in 32 (For backwards compatibility). So, the downside is no 32 bit layer and required kernel driver signing...the upside is no 32 bit layer and required kernel driver signing. That means no malware or spyware can insert itself into the kernel b/c it won't be signed by microsoft. It also means that a lot of open source projects won't work and that hardware manufactures are likely to not port drivers for consumer (and older) hardware...at least until there is a big demand.

I'm just looking forward to Leopard :D

MacOS X seems pretty good. Sadly, I don't care for Apple's recent laptop hardware (...or in general, the premium price they've charged for on it, although what I saw after looking at the recent thread on Macbooks impressed me at how close to parity they've come on price.)