OPINIONS SOUGHT - Do I Upgrade to 64 bit?

[newtusmaximus]

Torreydale, thanks for your response.  I was aware of the earlier thread I started last year on the life expectancy of 32 bit ubuntu  and a rant that perfectly good  pcs might have to be "scrapped"  just because a suitable OS was no longer available,  Touched on the same theme/argument also here (above)

My question though this time was whether I should upgrade to 64 bit LL on this machine , and if so what  "penalty" in extra resource I would have to pay - CPU  and memory use., especially as I had at present 3 x 1 GM ram available.

Well to answer my own question I burned the LL3.4 64bit beta this evening and ran it as a live DVD under load - simultaneously running- wired LAN, GIMP photo editing, vlc  playing a streamed video and a spread sheet doing a data search..

I was surprised to find from RESOURCE that CPU use ( Both cores) maxed at 60%  with memory maxing at circa 50% .  This at a usage well above what I would normally expect, or want to,  to do simultaneously.

CONCLUSION - ca upgrade from LL2.8 32 bit to LL3.4 64 bit without the NEED to increase memory.  The latter can be upgraded, if and when ( bidding sites permitting )

So thank you to all who helped.