I’m a big fan of x64, and that’s why I’m running Windows Vista x64 on all my computers (which support it). The support for x64 from hardware vendors and ISVs is very good, but unfortunately there are some things that are not ready yet. One of those things are IFilters. IFilters are used by the Windows Search service on Windows Vista, and by Desktop Search on Windows XP. There are a lot of IFilters out there, but unfortunately no IFilters compiled for x86 will work on x64. For me, that means that I loose the ability to index, among other things, TIFF files. That represents a major problem for me because I have a very large document library in TIFF format. The real kicker is that Microsoft’s own IFilters that are included with Office 2007, are still x86 and will not work with x64. According to Microsoft, they are working on a fix, but no one knows when this will be available. In the meantime, I have been able to track down a few x64 filters, e.g. the ZIP IFilter to index ZIP archives, and an x64 IFilter for PDF from Foxit Software.
Get them here:
UPDATE: Microsoft have just released a filter pack for several file formats. The packages comes for both x86 and x64. It is supported for installation on Exchange 2007, MOSS 2007, WSS 3.0 etc. Get it here:
Morgan