I wondered about that. When I was running windows 7 64bit,, window-eyes
installed under program files x86 folder. Indicating that it's a 32 bit app.
What's up with that?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cory Martin" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2011 9:29 PM
Subject: Re: window eyes 7.5 and 64 bit operating system
Hi, what is 64-bit? I'll do my best to explain this. Computers
process information at a certain speed, think of yourself watching traffic
go down a street. The first computers were no more than a rutted dirt
road, the travel was slow and you could only go one way at a time. Then
they introduced 16-bit which doubled the width of the road increasing the
speed. 32-bit systems doubled this road again so now you have even more
space for traffic, and 64-bit is again increasing this width double-wide.
So now for more realistic information. MS-DOS was 16-bit, Windows 95
pushed this in to 32-bit with the trend continuing trhough Windows 98, NT,
ME, 2000 and XP. By the late end of XP's development they were trying to
implement it under 64-bit, especially since Apple has had 64-bit support
for ages. There are builds of Windows XP 64-bit, but the last time I
tried running one, although it installed fine and my system seemed to work
with it, at the time the other screen reader I was using would not install
it's video intercept driver. We won't get in to the name of that one but
I'm sure you can all guess which one it was. Maybe Window Eyes would fair
better with XP 64-bit, I might try it and see. Nevertheless, with Vista
and 7, they started releasing two versions, the 32-bit and 64-bit version.
The rule of thumb is, if your system supports 64-bit in all its components
out of the box, you can use it. The advantages to 64-bit over 32-bit is
32-bit has a limit to how much RAM the system can recognize, 3GB though
I've also heard 3.5GB will be accepted, but nothing more. I see new
motherboards shipping on Tiger Direct that support up to 24GB of RAM under
64-bit. But if you put 24 gigs of RAM in to a 32-bit system, it'll only
see the first 3 or 3.5 gigs of it. So that's one advantage. The other is
that your processor can push data along that highway twice as fast as it
could on a 32-bit system, so naturally the system is faster. Windows
includes backward compatibility for legacy 32-bit applications so they
will work on a 64-bit system, but typically you should push to use 64-bit
applications on a 64-bit system instead of 32-bit ones. You will not see
32-bit systems shipping new out of hte box anymore very much if at all
because manufacturers don't see the need to build small roads anymore when
they can make them twice as wide. The only exception here is netbooks and
smaller systems which cannot support a 64-bit processor, though that will
likely very soon change. Either way, 32-bit is a thing of the past. A
screen reader needs to be 64-bit because of the intercept driver and I
would guess because of the complexity of such a program needing full
access to the OS.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know the same download or
disk for Window Eyes will install either a 32-bit or 64-bit version of the
screen reader, depending on what type of opperating system it detects. As
a result you do not need a separate disk for 64-bit.
HTH,
Cory
On 21/06/2011 7:48 PM, Louis wrote:
Hello folks. I just got a computer that is running the 64 bit version
of Windows 7. I have two questions. First what is the diffrence
between 32 bit and 64 bit? Second question, do I need a separate
Window Eyes instalation CD for 64 bit? Thanks for your help.
Louis
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