32-bit

If you use popular computational programs such as spreadsheet workhorses Microsoft Excel and Apple Numbers, you might run into an issue in which, when using large number values, the system will appear to truncate the values of numbers entered.

For instance, if you open Excel and enter the value "12345678901234567890" into a cell, the program will change this to "12345678901234500000," where every value past the 15th character is set to zero. This happens in Apple's Numbers spreadsheet and other programs as well.

While the significance of the last numbers is perhaps questionable, it does limit … Read more

A new procedure has surfaced that may allow owners of the older and unsupported Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 machines to run Mountain Lion natively on their systems.

When Apple initially released OS X Mountain Lion developer previews to testers and its development community, word spread that the OS would leave out some of Apple's earlier Intel-based Macs, including the first Mac Pro systems that still pack a decent amount of computing power. Apple made these requirements official more recently on its OS X up-to-date Web page for Mountain Lion.

The reason for these limitations revolved around … Read more

Most Windows users are familiar with the Disk Defragmenter utility -- or, at least, they should be. Defragmenting your hard drive can improve your computer's performance by making sure that files are all stored in one spot on the disk. There are plenty of alternatives to the built-in Windows defragmenter, including UltraDefrag (32-bit). This program comes with a defragmenter and other optimization tools that can ensure that your computer is performing as it should.

UltraDefrag has a simple interface that will look familiar to anyone who's used this kind of software before. We clicked the Analyze button, and … Read more

Following closely after the release of Safari 5.1.4, Apple today released version 5.1.5 of its Web browser to address difficulties a number of users have had opening the program in 32-bit mode.

Apple's latest hardware and software support has been for 64-bit code, but in order to support older plug-ins and for other compatibility reasons Apple includes a 32-bit binary for its Safari Web browser. To load the software in 32-bit mode, you just need to get information on the application in the Finder and check the "Open in 32-bit" box.

Apparently a … Read more

Copying large files can be a tedious and time-consuming task. Fortunately, there's ExtremeCopy Free (32-bit). This easy-to-use program can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to copy files. Although when we tried it the program didn't reach "up to eight times the speed of the Windows copying function" as the publisher claims it can, it still offered a meaningful improvement over the native Windows feature.

The program has no real interface of its own, aside from a configuration menu. Here, users can choose to set ExtremeCopy as Explorer's default copier and keep it … Read more

Windows 7 is four to five times less vulnerable to malware infections than is Windows XP.

Those are the findings of Microsoft's latest Security Intelligence Report (PDF), which detailed in depth the state of software vulnerabilities, exploits, security breaches, and malware in 2010.

Overall, the study found that infection rates for newer Microsoft operating systems with the latest service packs are consistently lower than those for older OSes, giving Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 the highest marks for security.

Looking at the number of reported infections per 1,000 computers, Microsoft found that Windows 7 64-bit had … Read more

Working with files in Windows can be a cumbersome proposition, and we've seen a variety of different programs that aim to simplify this process. But we can't say we've ever seen anything quite like FilerFrog (32-bit). This utility adds an incredibly helpful set of functions to the Windows context menu, making it easier than ever to organize and maintain your files.

When we first installed the program, we weren't quite sure what to do; it's a shell extension and thus has no interface of its own. Fortunately, it comes with a Help file that explains … Read more

After years of using Windows, most people find that Windows Explorer and its hierarchical folders is a pretty intuitive way to organize and accessing files. For those users interested in trying something different, however, there's Circle Dock 32bit. This attractive desktop enhancement lets users arrange files in circular orbits, a novel and potentially very useful way to organize things.

The program's interface is attractive, consisting of a light blue ring with a bubble-like graphic in the middle. Right-clicking on this graphic brought up a menu with a variety of options, and at that point we decided that we … Read more

While the phrase "640KB RAM ought to be enough for anybody" was falsely attributed to Bill Gates, it definitely outlines a way many of us think about the computing limits we're faced with. At the time this was purportedly said, computers were just transitioning to 16-bit architectures with the Intel 8088 processor (the one used in some of the first PCs), which broke through the 64-byte memory limit of the older architecture.

In the past few years Macs and other PCs have been in a similar transition with 64-bit capable processors (starting with Apple's G5), but … Read more