What an amazing difference in computers

So, yeah...I had to rush out an buy a new computer last week due to my just-out-of-warranty laptop's hard drive locking up because of heat.  If you've followed by blog for a while, you've read about issues I have periodically, and things I might complain (chimp) about, when using my computer.  One of those complaints has been Microsoft Outlook 2007's poor, poor performance, and it's inability to shutdown in a timely manner.

Folks have sent me emails periodically with tips on how to maximize Outlook -- and they worked to a point.  But, Outlook remained the bane of my computing existence.

So...now I have a new laptop.  There's not much difference between my old laptop and the new one, except for size (its a smaller laptop).  Same RAM size, a little larger hard drive, but that's about it -- EXCEPT for one small thing.  My old laptop had an AMD x64 chip -- the new one has an Intel 32-bit processor.

Yet, with this small change, my computing experience has been transformed.  Outlook is as speedy as I expected it to be in the first place.  It also shuts down quickly when you close it.  And, it's not just Outlook -- every app seems to run faster and better.

Could it be an issue where apps generally aren't written correctly to run on a x64 processor?  I know Office 2007 is not a 64-bit app, but could it really be optimized for a 32-bit computing environment?  Or, could this actually be an instance where Intel is actually better than AMD?

Who can really, *really* tell?  I'm happy and that's all that matters.