Well, I did it anyway. As soon as I got home tonight, I popped in the Windows Vista x64 DVD, and rebooted my desktop machine. Thanks to one of my coworker's help, we got the final release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 slipstreamed into a Windows Vista x64 install DVD. Awesome!
That said, I am extremely gratified at the performance of my machine. Granted, it's not a state of the art box anymore, but it still holds its own pretty well. Check out the capture of my "System Screen" (click to open larger view in new window/tab):
A score of 4.6 isn't bad. Not bad at all. And the performance of Vista x64 is much, much faster than Windows XP Professional 32bit. The speed increase is definitely very noticeable to me, and that's always a welcome change when it comes to a desktop computing environment.
Below, you'll see a capture of the "Performance Information and Tools" screen (click to open larger view in new window/tab):
Pretty good! In fact, the only thing keeping me from achieving a "5" rating is the processor (most likely the model number itself, not really the clock speed), and memory (I am sure the score is not based on the amount of RAM, but the speed).
I reinstalled nearly all of my applications, and they work flawlessly, even faster than before! Way cool.
Heck, even Counter-Strike: Source ran flawlessly in full 1680x1050 with all of the texture settings set to maximum. Way cool again!
I guess this marks the milestone where I completely leave the 32 bit computing world behind (well, sort of, since many of my applications are *still* 32 bit).
All that said, all I can say is, "About time!"