Comments on: Office 2010 Beta – 32-bit or 64-bit – The Choice is Clear

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:05:12 +0000

I think the point made about the utilisation of MMX capabilities may be a bit of a red herring. If someone is deciding whether or not to use the 64 bit of Office it would imply they already have a 64 bit processor – which version of Office they then choose doesn’t really matter. The rest of the points are valid though so I’ve stuck with the 32 bit version – thanks for your article!

By: Simon Jones

Simon Jones — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:42:28 +0000

Why is my Office 2010 Beta asking for a product key?

Because it wants one. You will have been given one as part of the download or signup.

In any Office 2010 application, click File | Help | Change Product Key (on the right hand side).

Enter the Product Key you were given and let Office go through a short “Installation” routine to record that key.

By: Ray

Ray — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:44:20 +0000

Why is my Office 2010 Beta asking for a product key?

By: Simon Jones

Simon Jones — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:56:31 +0000

The MMX instruction set does the work of many conventional instructions in single commands. The single commands run faster than the conventional instructions.

Microsoft say that Office 2010 64-bit on Windows 64-bit may render graphics more slowly than Office 2010 32-bit on Windows 32-bit because the 64-bit CPU doesn’t support the MMX instruction set.

In fact, MMX instructions may work on 64-bit CPUs but SSE/SSE2 instructions may be faster and (probably because of this) Microsoft deprecated the use of MMX instructions on 64-bit CPUs.

It sounds like Office 2010 64-bit has been written to not use MMX because it is deprecated but is not using the, faster, SSE/SSE2 instructions either but dropping back to conventional instructions instead.

See http://www.tommesani.com/MMXPrimer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMX_(instruction_set)
http://www.intel.com/design/intarch/mmx/mmx.htm

By: ripclaw

ripclaw — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:15:33 +0000

“Graphic elements may render more slowly in the 64-bit version of Office because 64-bit CPUs may lack MMX support for multimedia and communications.”

Err…huh?

By: John

John — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:52:24 +0000

It seems fairly obvious to me, then, that migrating to Office 2010 64bit is not really an option for many people, especially given that many organisations with whom I deal do not yet have Office 2007.
I would willingly try it, but not at the expense of not being able to run 32bit Office 2007 alongside it.

By: Simon Jones

Simon Jones — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:49:30 +0000

Jim,
You are correct and also you cannot install any 32-bit MAPI based messaging application if you have 64-bit Office installed nor can you install 64-bit Office if you have a 32-bit MAPI messaging application installed.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:58:26 +0000

Another reason to go 32-bit is that you can install it alongside an existing non-beta Office setup – the 64-bit doesn’t allow this.

By: Simon Jones

Simon Jones — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:57:58 +0000

Yes, 32-bit PowerPoint can open/save files created with 64-bit PowerPoint and vice-versa. Obviously, the 2GB limit would apply to the 32-bit version.
PowerPoint 2010 is much better at dealing with embedded video but slow machines may still stutter during playback particularly if you’re applying effects to the video.

By: Simon Brown

Simon Brown — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:39:15 +0000

I’m running 64-bit Vista, about to change to 64-bit Win7, but I chose to install the 32-bit beta as I couldn’t believe there would be a significant benefit in accessing all the memory installed, so thanks for clarifying that. Does *anyone* have an Excel workbook in excess of 2 GB?
Where I thought it might help is with PowerPoint presentations that have video or multiple graphics embedded. These can be notoriously slow on older version of PPT. Do you have any info on whether a PPT presentation put together using a 64-bit version would be readable/playable on a 32-bit system?