hi Derek,
most programs are optimized for the 32 bit operating systems currently, so they may run slower on a 64 bit ...
Not really true. Lots of (most?) Linux apps seem to run fine on 64bit.
Yes, but actually the problem rather comes with ms windows; apart from my linux pd/ardour/scilab music system, I use some windows xp programs like max/msp and have no information about their performance under windows xp64 (in 32bit mode)
The issue here wouldn't be so much the speed by the compatibility. I don't know how far PD is with 64bit optimizations, for example, and you might still have some problems with binary-only drivers under Linux, so 64bit may or may not be worth your money. I end up running PD in 32bit mode because I had problems loading soundfiles to tables in 64bit. Check the list for postings from thewade about other 64bit issues.
I saw this. This looks like one more reason to choose 32 bit. According to what I read across the Internet about processors for notebooks, the Pentium M (centrino technology) looks very good for realtime audio. The AMD equivalent (Sempron) should be good too, but I didn't find much information about it; maybe someone here has a laptop with this type of cpu ?
thanks for your information, -j