A customer uses a Windows 2000 Professional computer to run

A customer uses a Windows 2000 Professional computer to run some low-level automated programs in his business. The operational lifetime of Windows 2000 has long since passed, and he wants to upgrade the computer. He realizes that upgrading to Windows 7 isn’t an option, but asks about an upgrade to Windows Vista. What do you tell him?

A. You tell him that the options for upgrading Windows 2000 Professional are Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, and Business.

B. You tell him that the options for upgrading Windows 2000 Professional are Windows Vista Home Basic and Home Premium.

C. You tell him that the option for upgrading Windows 2000 Professional is Windows Vista Home Basic.

D. You tell him there is no supported option for directly upgrading Windows 2000 Professional to any version of Windows Vista.

Solution

A and D. 64-bit Vista provides better performance and data throughput due to the greater amount of data that can be processed on 64-bit CPUs. A 32-bit computer can address up to 4 GB of physical data, while a 64-bit computer can address much more. Often, 32-bit architectures are referred to as x86, a term derived from successors of the early 8086 processors (all ending in the number “86”). The term x86-64 or usually just x64 is used to differentiate between 32-bit and 64-bit processing platforms.