64-bit Windows 7 upgrade -- disk reads are 25% faster

In a recent post, I mentioned that I had a new Dell laptop with a solid state disk (SSD) instead of a rotating magnetic disk (HD). I discussed the advantages of SSD and its relationship to Internet connection speed, and presented some rough benchmarks of disk speed. It was about twice as fast as my desktop computer and 4 times as fast as my old laptop with a hard disk.

Today I upgraded the operating system from 32 to 64-bit Windows 7, and re-ran the ATTO disk benchmark. As shown here, writes are about the same speed, but reads are 25% faster than with 32-bit Windows 7. I did not benchmark application load or boot time with the 32-bit operating system, but it feels noticeably faster now.