Microsoft has issued a warning in its Office 2010 Technology Guarantee FAQ about installing the 64-bit (x64) versions of Office 2010 applications:
Will a 64-bit version of the Office 2010 product be available?
Yes, 64-bit Office 2010 product upgrades will be available. However we [Microsoft] strongly recommend most users install 32-bit version of Office 2010 on both 32 and 64-bit Operating Systems because currently many common add-ins for Office will not function in the 64-bit edition. The 64-bit installation of Microsoft Office 2010 products will be available for users who commonly use very large documents or data set and need Excel 2010 programs to access greater than 2GB of memory. There may be technical issues with the 64-bit version and in order to install a 64-bit version of Office 2010 product users must have a 64-bit supported operating system on their PC.
“Why should I care,” you ask? You may find yourself unable use an add-in or application on which you rely heavily. For example, if you rely on an add-in for Word to be able to save and load documents to your organization’s document management system, you might be out of luck, until the vendor creates a 64-bit version of the add-in.
In addition to the add-ins not working, users will have to remove all of their Office 2007 applications in order to install even one Office 2010 app. This is because Office 2007 is 32-bit (x86) and can not coexist with the 64-bit version of Office 2010.
Let’s recap on 64-bit Office 2010:
- Most add-ins won’t work in 64-bit Office 2010
- You can’t keep the 32-bit version of Office including 2007, in which the add-ins did work
- 64-bit Office 2010 may have technical issues beyond the 32-bit version
The conclusion seems clear: unless you have a clear need for the large memory access that the 64-bit version of Office 2010 allows, stick with the 32-bit version.
Do you have a work around for sync-ing contacts in outlook 2010 x64 with a windows mobile phone? My CAD program requires office x64. I find this whole situation leading me to not but another windows based phone.
You're best off syncing your data with your phone directly to your mail server rather than with Outlook.
If that's not an option, you can always go the virtual route and run a virtual machine with 32-bit office. VMware allows you to connect USB devices directly to virtual machines without the need for a virtual driver. Their Unity mode allows you to see the windows in the virtual machine just as if they were windows in the host operating system:
http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/new.html
I've given up on the Windows Mobile OS a while ago. I recently got a Palm Pre with their WebOS. WebOS has been doing all of the cool data integration Windows Phone 7 has promised for the last two years. I highly recommend WebOS, especially wit the great deals (free after rebate) HP has made since it acquired Palm, and with the impending release of WebOS 2:
http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/preplus/index.html
By the way, did I mention that WebOS has the best Exchange sync of any mobile phone, even on par with Windows Mobile 7?