Amilo Xi2550 running on 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate

Fujitsu sold this laptop with 32 bit Vista and claimed that it could have 2GB max. To start with the latter, that was not true of course. I installed 4GB on the first day I bought it, and it worked perfectly. Of course with 32 bit Windows, you only have 3GB+ RAM available because of the limitations of the 32 bit operating system.

Fujitsu later claimed that this laptop can not be used with Windows 7. That claim is also rubbish. I installed 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate SP1, and the laptop is running better and faster than ever before. The drivers for the JMicron raid controller are on the Windows 7 DVD, the driver for the Silicon Image eSATA controller is found by Windows update, (somewhat outdated) drivers for the videocard and the network devices are also on the Windows 7 DVD. You only have to get updated drivers for those from the web site of the manufacturers. You also have to get Intel drivers for the chipset and the flashdrive. That flashdrive is now used as cache, and it makes the HDD much faster. For the Infrared receiver you can use the kit from the Fujitsu web site, it has 64bit drivers too. The only problem is the webcam. The Fujitsu website only offers outdated 32 bit drivers. However a long time ago I found a newer kit with 64 bit drivers, and they work fine.

The next step is to upgrade the memory to 8GB. Yes, 8GB should be possible, but it seems you can only use something like 6,75GB because of similar addressing problems as with the 32 bit Vista. I will report back as soon as I have installed it. On my new laptop with 32GB RAM I noticed that 64 bit Windows takes about 6 GB RAM when using just a browser. That means that there will not be much swapping, so the system will be quite fast.