As a newbie to Windows 7, I am just enjoying (sic) the introduction to 64-bit software, and the interaction with the legacy 32-bit software.  Luckily, I have just one 16-bit application (nothing to do with Python), which will no longer run.

I am glad to say that Python has had 64-bit versions starting with 2.6, and it seems to cope well with having both 32 and 64-bit versions installed alongside each other.

Aside: Many developers are keen to write code that runs on multiple operating systems.  I like to do the same for multiple Python versions, so I have a lot of them installed, for testing purposes.

In particular, the installer creation in distutils (usually interfaced via setup.py) is able to create 32 and 64-bit installers (depending on the version of Python that it is run with), and the installers provide a sensible list of installed Python versions.  So a 32-bit installer provides a list (and correct locations) of 32-bit Python installs, the 64-bit installer provides a list of 64-bit Python installs.

It’s always good when software works straight out the box, and works sensibly! (Yes, I know it means that someone else has put the effort in upstream – much appreciated).