[Judas]

Since the betas and RCs of Flash just a bit over a year ago.. and about this time (well a little over a year ago since i last asked and posted this identical poll...)... things have changed...

64bit Flash is no official and fully supported.

And the current issue that some people consider critical is Silverlight, the direct competitor to that of flash in a way (although HTML5 seems to be making it's own way)

Anywho, even for the greatest users and the newest computer recruits that are lining up to play, without silverlight for some, it's still not good enough to use exclusively. Worse yet is many of the favorite plugins/activex add-ons aren't there... at least for the few people that make use of the other add-ons that are floating about, i would wager that that percentage is still quite low and won't be growing much beyond that of silverlight/flash...

Still, lets take netflix for example, makes silverlight a requirement, without it, your dead in the water, therefore having to travel back to the 32bit version to play your netflix.... BAH... you don't want to have to do that... so why go 64bit if you still gotta do that crap and make everyones lives miserable.... right?

But wait do not fear, Like adobe did with flash 64bit, silver light is indeed readily available in a 64bit flavor...

Microsoft has since launched an RC of Silverlight 5, available to the masses. And with silver light 5, comes 64bit browser support which works in from what i've seen so far, the most critical of browsers, being IE64 (ok. laugh.... go ahead.. wtf ever ) and Firefox's 64bit client too.

For your convenience here is a direct LINK to Microsoft Silverlight 5 without having to screw around with redirects and confusion and getting lost... well the best i can do short of deep linking to the file itself..... microsoft "doesn't" approve most often.

Located here ~> Downloads: Silverlight.NET

Image related for better clarity on where you click to download the x64 version....

[Judas]

Personally i've used x64 since windows XP x64 went live and i had it.... However, in the end... i find myself in the 32bit realm within a short period of time and never going back because just so many damn things required flash...... what a bloody pain in the ass.

After the mid to fall release of Adobe Flash x64 FIRST Beta of 2010, the moment i had it, i was officially using x64 browsers exclusively..... with ONLY the rare silverlight related issue in which i had to go into the 32bit browsers for..... but this is before netflix went live here in canada..

the only thing i frequently wanted to watch was comedy central, which obviously used silverlight...

Recently Adobe x64 went OFFICIAL, i became more interested in digging up more dirt on silverlight. I had been visiting quite often through 2011.. say every month or 2... and seeing no progress or release information ... although in i beleive may of 2011 there was finally some details on silverlight 5 being x64 ready.... wee.... good news.

Only recently have they actually made a working x64 available for download.. and of course.. you have to do it manually...

Since then.. and i've been using it for probably a good month month and a half, i haven't fired up a single 32bit browser.... not for anything....

[Sihastru]

It doesn't matter to me if my browser is 32 or 64bit. Until I can find a reason to need a 64bit browser I will continue to not care. There is no tangible performance difference these days between a 32 and a 64bit browser.

So I might be in the "No, who needs x64 anyways?" category, but I won't vote, I don't like the tone of that question (or is it an answer? - see what I did there?). The poll seems tailored to steer people to not vote for certain answers.

Until someone can convince me that I really need a 64bit browser, I won't even bother checking. I might be using a 64bit browser and not know it, that's how unimportant this seems to me.

This does not translate into a generalization... I do explicitly use 64bit versions of certain applications, mostly because they work better with more accessible memory. I don't see the need for more memory be a concern for a browser, quite the opposite.

I see a lot of browser "wars" on the interwebs, where they compare certain "features", and one of them is the ability of a browser to consume the smallest amount of memory. This seems to be the number one concern of users, that their browser would not be "a memory hog". It seems a bit counter productive to build a 64bit version just to have it consume less and less and less memory.

The only reason for 64bit for some applications is uniformity. And this is more of a "feel good about myself" problem then "I can't live without it" problem.