So I'm looking at getting a new notebook, and it also looks like I'll be using Win7 64bit as I need windows.

Any recent news on gimp+python at 32/64 but under windows 7?

I know there have been past issues, etc.

(P.S. Any good notebook recommendations?)

-Rob A>

I upgraded to Win7 64-bit over a year ago Rob. I still run 32-bit GIMP since many plugins either never got compiled for 64-bit or I don't have the ability to do so (I know you do so won't be an issue to you). I believe someone did Resynthesizer for 64-bit GIMP. Anyway, since PS plugins are pretty much not working anymore in GIMP, your python script plugin using XNView eliminates that as an issue. Might actually upgrade to 64-bit GIMP when 2.8 gets released. No news w.r.t. 64-bit GIMP though; just wanted to pass on you my thoughts. One other thing. GIMP freezes up quite often in Win7 for some reason; I'm not the only one experiencing this issue and have seen no solution despite deciding to update to 2.6.11 (nor am I holding my breath; just tolerating it since it don't happen that often). I do notice it happens when more likely when my email alerter begins to toggle which sort of suggests it's an interupt issue.

The only advice I can give is, buy an USB cooling fan to put under any notebook you decide to purchase. I've had the best luck with Sony and Toshiba products. I'd steer clear of Dell until they get the Intel chipset problems resolved, and not knowing what products are affected by it.

I have Win 7 - 64 bit, and have found more problems (ie. compatability issues, crashes, etc.) than benefits. That's not counting the continuing hardware issues with the Sony Vaio. What ever you get, it wish you the best.

RobA , I have just upgraded to win7 & X64 and Gimp 2.6.11 for X64 and X32 (according to sourceforge).
I run a duocore e8400 x64 cpu, desktop with 8G ram, which although a bit dated, is still a reasonably powerful machine. I find that Gimp is crashing on me. I am working on a map in A3 size and my machine is running very slow when I save selections or paths. So I have to back up often. But saving the XCF can take upto 2 mins (no other apps open , except for Windows Task Manager so I can keep an eye on what is happening).
I am somewhat surprised as I really thought that it would run much better than my Win XP 32bit machine.

EDIT, it appears that having the marching ants active in the selection on a coastline (map for a Cartographers forum) gobbles up 12-15 % of cpu cycles. I just noticed that cpu cycles went back to 0-2 when I selected none!

@RobA,
What about setting up the machine to dual-boot Windows and a Linux distro? If you set it up so the HD was partitioned like (five partitions):

WIN-OS NTFS LINUX/ LINUX/home LINUX-swap

Then you could share files between the two OSs, and choose your OS at boot. I've done this before with a previous HD, and it worked out rather well.