Wndows 10 64-bit or 32-bit?

[sidtep]

I have an 8 years old laptop, I do feel it is potato but I don't want to buy a new laptop right now. I only need it for an introductory C course in my college.
I can upgrade it to 4GB ram but did not do it earlier as 32 bit did not support. Also I never saw it using more than 2 GB RAM.

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[Salmon Trout]

I have a Dell laptop very similar specification from 2009 and it is running Windows 10 32 bit perfectly fine. It only has 2 GB RAM. if you want to use built in Bash you need the 64 bit version. if they are the same price go for the 64 bit.

[sidtep]

What is built in bash?
Wouldn't 64 bit be better? Will games run better on 64-bit? Any performance improvement?

[Salmon Trout]

Windows 10 64 bit now has the Linux Bash shell available.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/commandline/wsl/about

You will not see much (if any) performance improvements, either to games or otherwise, with that hardware.

[SuperDave]

It appears that you only have 1 Gb of free space on your harddrive while Windows requires at least 15% or 3 gb of free space to operate efficiently.

[sidtep]

Well I'll be deleting another drive and expand this one then.

[strollin]

The general rule of thumb regarding whether to go with 32 or 64 bit is whether or not you require more than 4GB of RAM.  32-bit can only address around 3.2GB of RAM so anything more is a waste.

[Geek-9pm]

In the future the 64 bit system should be better.
But right now the 32 bit does almost everything you need.

[Salmon Trout]

Considering you would likely have to pay for Windows 10, I wonder why you would bother.

[booxm]

if your cpu supports 64bit, i can't see any reasons NOT to use a 64bit OS.

[foxygrandma]

64 bit.  Anna Ruth

[Computer_Commando]

I have a Dell laptop very similar specification from 2009 and it is running Windows 10 32 bit perfectly fine. It only has 2 GB RAM. if you want to use built in Bash you need the 64 bit version. if they are the same price go for the 64 bit.

I have pretty much the same.  2 almost identical Dell laptops one has a T3200 with 4GB RAM, the other was upgraded from a T2370 to a T6500 with 3GB RAM.
Both are 64-bit Win10.
Tried swapping RAM & the T6500 wouldn't POST.  Same RAM in both.  Mystery.  3GB is fine for 64-bit if you don't do a lot of multitasking.
Upgrading to SSD's makes a bigger difference even though they are SATA2.

[Salmon Trout]

I have pretty much the same.

Mine is a Latitude D830, with a T7500. I bought it cheap from an ex-corporate refurbisher with XP Pro. The only cheap way to get a modern Windows OS was to join the Windows 10 Insider program. It had a SATA 2 80 GB hard drive, and I replaced this with a Sandisk Ultra II 120GB SSD. Unfortunately my wife does not like it, says it is too heavy, so it just sits on a shelf plugged into the AC with an Ethernet cable to the router and I remote desktop into it every now and then mainly to get the latest Insider build. it is on 161202 at the moment. I could purpose it as a DLNA server and Torrent box except that my NAS does those things already.

[Computer_Commando]

Mine is a Latitude D830, with a T7500. ...

Inspiron 1525's:  found 1 at the curbside trash, no drive, no battery no charger.
The other was given to me when it wasn't being used anymore.
Both now have 120GB Samsung 840 EVO's & upgraded wifi cards, dual-band N to replace single-band G, 300MHz instead of 100Mhz wired.

[Salmon Trout]

Over Christmas I have made a bootable Raspberry Pi Pixel Desktop x86 pen drive and am running it on the laptop with persistence. I keep thinking I must get a Pi and this will get me some practice. I can get into it using TightVNC and next I shall set up SSH. I don't have to go back to work until Jan 3 so I should be OK...