The 64 bit OS has become more popular in the last year and Microsoft has done a great to make that happen with the latest releases of its core products Windows, Office and even SharePoint all running on 64 bit. SharePoint goes so far as to only run on 64 bit machines, which has a bunch of IT folks scrambling to get new machines asap.
I have been running 64 bit on my laptop since 2008 and for the most part have no issues with it. I especially enjoy all the extra RAM I can run on my machine (12GB). I have had issues with drivers not being available for certain peripherals and also some wireless hot spots not allowing me to conntect and even some backwards compatibily issues, but in general I have had a really good experience.
So know comes the Microsoft Office 2010 beta and soon in a couple of months the general release of the uber popular Microsoft suite. Now you are probably wondering about whether you should install the 32 bit version of Microsoft Office 2010 or the 64 bit version, Microsoft can help wit the answer. According to the FAQ on the new site Microsoft Tech Garaunteed site, Microsoft does not necessarilly recommend installing the 64 bit version of Office 2010.
Will a 64 bit version of Office 2010 be available?
"Yes, 64-bit Office 2010 product upgrades will be available. However we strongly recommend most users install 32-bit version of Office 2010 on both 32 and 64-bit Operating Systems because currently many common add-ins for Office will not function in the 64-bit edition. The 64-bit installation of Microsoft Office 2010 products will be available for users who commonly use very large documents or data set and need Excel 2010 programs to access greater than 2GB of memory. There may be technical issues with the 64-bit version and in order to install a 64-bit version of Office 2010 product users must have a 64-bit supported operating system on their PC."
Personally, I have been running the 64 bit version for months and I love it, but I don not have a bunch of add-ins or macros or anything of note really that needed to be ported over to this install. I have been running a clean, no add-in installation and it works great. That being said the only reason I installed the 64 bit version was because I am running a 64 bit OS so I thought it made sense. Besides the challenge with add-ins as specified above I have also heard that the 32 bit version can actuall perform faster than the 64 bit version and that only someone who is putting a serious load on their CPU will see a benefit. It works for me, but I can see where there could be issues for some users. So all in all, no real benefit for most users to install the 64 bit version.
One other note, I have seen backwards compatibilty issues with files saved in PowerPoint on a 64 bit machine and then moved to a 32 bit machine running 32 bit PowerPoint (2007 and 2010). The slide animation and transitions slow to a crawl and are unusable. But if you download the latest PowerPoint Viewer from the web they run fine in there.
Check out the new site here Microsofts Tech Gauranteee Program for 2010
here and keep up to date with latest information.