|
My 2 cents:
An i7 will definitely speed things up, even if you don't have the fancy multi-threaded applications. The reason for this is TurboBoost. i7 processors (and some others) can shut down unused cores and use the available resources (heat dissipation, voltage) to overclock the working cores (within some safety limits).
Whoever said only the i7 720 and 820 is 64bit: Nope, every modern processor is 64bit. The i7 6xx (which are more akin to an i5 than an i7) and the i7 920 (which isn't in a great deal of laptops, chiefly because Intel list its cost price as $1050USD...) are both 64bit. The importance of a 64bit OS is mostly (as pointed out by others) the ability to address more than 4gB of memory.
If you're buying a laptop new, you're almost definitely going to get Windows 7 Home Premium on it. Possibly Professional edition (which adds a largely-useless XP-mode and sometimes-useful Domain Join feature) or Ultimate (which is professional with 34 more languages and some over-hyped encryption - do not pay extra for this).
Pretty much all software is going to be FINE in Windows 7, unless it is particularly old or quirky.
TL;DR, gregbradley: Get the Core i7. Nothing to lose (except battery life).
|