[de_]

Thanks for the input so far.
At this point in time I am only an hour into installing Win 7 64. I'm trying to avoid the scenario where I spend the hours fully installing the laptop with all my apps, tools, patches etc and then found out in a few weeks down the road something key to FIRST does not run in Win 7 64. Also its getting harder and harder to buy a new laptop with anything other than Win 7 64 so there will be a lot of people having the same question.

This year was our first year to use Java. So Netbeans is the critical install. But if Labview development (and even Windriver) can all co-exist on the same pc, that's my ultimate goal.