Windows 7 and FS and other ramblings

Lot of people seem to be moving to Windows 7 and the question keeps arising as to whether FS9 and FSX will run well under this operating system. My experience is yes. As part of the development environment I use both FS9 and FSX are installed under Windows 7 64bit. Both run well.

Since the introduction of User Access Control (UAC) with Vista users have had problems when installing FS versions in the default directories. We strongly recommend that FS9 and FSX are installed in folders away from the default C:\Program Files folders. There is no problem in doing this and it gets away from problems that arise when UAC stops files being added or updated. Some users turn off UAC but I would not recommend doing that, and there is no need if the sims are installed away from default folders.

A question was asked recently as to whether FS will run under 64bit operating system - the answer is, of course, yes. Most addons and other applications designed for 32bit operation will also run just fine. I have used a 64Bit operating system now for a couple of years and cannot think of only one or two instances where an application will not run. These have been device oriented programs rather than end user applications. There are indeed advantages in a 64Bit operating system if you have 4Gb of memory. Under a 32Bit system you will not see all the RAM - maybe only around 3Gb. This is because the maximum amount of memory that can be addressed by a 32Bit operating system is 4Gb. This has to include all the other memory such as graphics and that required by device drivers and the operating system. Thus the amount left for your applications will be reduced and some RAM is just wasted. With 64Bit you will get just about all the 4Gb and easily more depending on how many memory slots your computer has. Since I don't think there is any price differential between 32and 64 Bit versions of Windows 7 it makes a lot of sense to get the 64Bit if you have 4Gb in your computer. Unfortunately some manufacturers do ship a 32Bit version with 4Gb.....