When Windows Vista was released, it seemed that hardware and software incompatabilities prevented almost everyone from using the OS to its fullest potential. But time and service packs helped smooth things out.
Windows 7, which is based on Vista's architecture, is not likely to have the same problems, but it will share one: You still can't run Adobe Flash apps in pages you view in 64-bit browsers. Internet Explorer, Firefox, it doesn't matter – if you have a 64-bit OS, you'll need to use a 32-bit browser to view the Flash on dynamic Web pages.
Sure, you can surf the Web without Flash, but we don't recommend it; you'd find many, if not most, of your favorite pages crippled if not unreadable altogether.
Luckily, Microsoft developed a sneaky workaround for this: When you install Windows 7, the default version of IE is the 32-bit flavor, so most users will never notice what they're missing. But they also won't get the performance benefits inherent with 64-bit, and if you try to download Flash when you're running that version of the software, you'll just get an Adobe tech note explaining the problem.
There's one other way to address this problem, but we imagine most people won't want to go down that particular road: switch to Linux. Adobe recently released an alpha version of the 64-bit Flash player for that OS, but Windows users still have to wait.
We contacted Adobe, and Tom Barclay, senior product marketing manager for Flash Player, responded with this statement:
"Our release of the alpha version of 64-bit Flash Player on Linux, now on Adobe Labs, was the first step in delivering on Adobe's commitment to make Flash Player native 64-bit across platforms. We chose Linux as our initial platform in response to numerous requests in our public Flash Player bug and issue management system and the fact that Linux distributions do not ship with a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default. We are committed to bringing native 64-bit Flash Player to Windows and Mac in the next major Flash Player release."
Whether that release will come in time for the release of Windows 7 on October 22, however, remains to be seen.
