Office 2010 - 32-bit or 64-bit?

In my previous column, I discussed the release dates and upgrade options for Microsoft’s (News - Alert) upcoming Office 2010 suite. In addition to offering the usual array of new features and enhancements, Office 2010 will be the first version of Office available in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. If you plan to upgrade to Office 2010, either for yourself or your company, which flavor should you consider?

One of Microsoft’s recent blog posts discussed the issue but ultimately came out in favor of installing the 32-bit edition even on a 64-bit version of Windows, advice with which I certainly agree.

The decision to run 32-bit or 64-bit Office opens a larger can of worms concerning 32-bit and 64-bit applications in general. Why choose one over the other?

The main benefit of 64-bit programs is their ability to take advantage of additional memory. A 32-bit operating system, for example, can’t access memory beyond 4GB, or more accurately 3GB since in most cases that extra fourth gigabyte of RAM (News - Alert) is reserved. A 64-bit OS can read up to 17 exabytes or 17 billion gigabytes, which hopefully should hold us for awhile!

The main drawback or challenge of a 64-bit operating system is that it requires 64-bit drivers to work with printers, scanners, and other peripherals. More vendors are writing such drivers for their newer products, but you may be out of luck if you need to run or support older hardware.

The same pros and cons hold true for individual applications. Most apps aren’t so memory hungry that they’d utilize all that extra memory. But if you need to work with huge images or videos or edit very large spreadsheets, a 64-bit app can come in handy. In fact, Microsoft has touted the ability to work with big spreadsheets as one advantage of the 64-bit version of Excel 2010. Using the 64-bit version of Office 2010, a single file can be larger than 2GB.

But a 64-bit Office 2010 also requires 64-bit versions of any controls, add-ins, and certain types of VBA code. Since many of those come from third-party vendors, who are often slow to keep up with the times, 64-bit versions may not yet be available. Many of the add-ins that you and your users need for Word, Excel, and other apps would not be able to run with 64-bit Office, at least not yet.

So despite the temptation to try out the latest and greatest 64-bit apps, in the case of Office 2010, you’ll want to follow Microsoft’s advice and stick with 32-bit Office for now. Once more third-party vendors get their act together and create 64-bit versions of their software, we’ll start getting a bit closer to that powerful and efficient 64-bit world.