Tried Vista 64-bit, but sticking with XP 32-bit

I have a powerful PC (Intel dual-core, 4GB RAM, ASUS motherboard), and I've
been running Windows XP Professional 32-bit for over a year on a partition on
the hard drive. I develop software using Visual Studio and SQL Server, I've
always felt that my software was not taking advantage of my advanced
hardware, so now that Vista SP1 is out, along with Office 2007 and Visual
Studio 2008 (used for developing software), I decided to install Vista 64-bit
on a second hard drive partition to see if my software would run faster.
Here are my comments/observations:

First, I was concerned that the drivers wouldn't be available for all my
hardware, including a Konica color printer which is no longer in production.
In fact, Vista installed all the drivers automatically and everything worked
great. I did have an issue with which plug in the back of the PC to plug my
speakers into--the speakers did not work under Vista but did under XP, but I
figured out how to configure the motherboard to resolve that issue.

Second, I activated Vista no problem, but when I tried to register it, the
Internet Explorer (IE) link to register it didn't work, and I spent about 3
hours on the phone with Microsoft, and finally figured out on my own that
there is a 32-bit IE and a 64-bit IE that you can run under Vista 64-bit, and
the link worked under the 64-bit IE but not the 32-bit.

Third, most of my software worked in 64-bit, although a couple IE add-ons
were either not available for the 64-bit IE or were still in beta. Also,
regarding my cell phone, which runs Windows Mobile, I cannot link my Outlook
files under Vista. The phone manufacturer says they are working to fix that,
and it should be available maybe this summer.

Fourth, I use Visual Studio for developing software, and much to my
amazement, a couple features of VS do not work when you run it in a 64-bit
environment vs. 32-bit, including in-particular something called 'Edit and
Continue'. One would think that the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the same
software would be identical, but they are not. This is absurd! (I'm running
the latest version of VS, VS 2008).

Finally, and most importantly, I found no performance enhancement from Vista
64-bit versus XP 32-bit, even running SQL Server 64-bit. In fact, it appears
my software runs exactly the same speed. Even though I have 4GB RAM, under
XP with my two video cards, I'm left with only 2.75GB, but under Vista
64-bit, I can access the full 4GB RAM. Also, I’m not sure whether my XP
software fully utilizes my dual-core processor, but I assume that Vista
would. If there was any performance enhancement under the 64-bit environment
with my hardware, I did not notice it.

Since I've always used an advanced firewall, anti-virus, and anti-spyware on
my PC, I've never had a problem with viruses, etc., so the security under XP
has always been satisfactory. In fact, I tend to turn off the Windows
firewall as it is redundant if not conflicting with my other firewall. So
the advanced security features in Vista do not help me.

With some software not yet available with 64-bit Vista, and the VS ‘Edit and
Continue’ not working, but no performance enhancement under 64-bit, I see no
reason to convert to Vista at this time, so I'm sticking with XP.

If I were to buy an even more advanced PC, e.g. quad-core processor with 8GB
RAM, it’s possible that I might see a performance enhancement vs. 32-bit, but
with the issues mentioned above with Vista 64-bit, I’m in no hurry to upgrade.
--
Ed