Good news for those of us who do not compile their own version of Inkscape! Partha Bagchi of Partha.com has been kind enough to compile 0.48.4 in a 64 bit Windows version. If you don't know who Partha is, he has been bringing 64bit and experimental builds of the GIMP to users for a long time, with very nice packages of addons all bundled in etc.

I have tested this Inkscape build and can tell you that it does not interfere with your current installation of Inkscape - on win 8 (and 7 too I assume) - it installs into the program files folder and not the program files x86 folder that contains your 32bit version of inkscape), that it runs very smoothly, that it picks up the prefs from your appdata folder without a hitch, and that the theme is in Partha's signature dark grayish colors. Pressure support for tablets is as good as in Inkscape current, i.e. you have to hide rulers to draw with the stylus.
I have not managed to crash it yet, but give me time...

Some caveats: Partha may be using the official release or an even older version of the code, because some enhancements are missing, like the keyboard customization in preferences and the measure tool. It does pick up the shortcuts from your user folder it seems as far as I can tell, so you just have to set them in another version of Inkscape that has the customization in Prefs. I have no idea if those enhancements are in the official release now but I really thought they were. Anyway you might notice a nice difference when handling large files because of more memory available.

If you like it or have suggestions he has a feedback link on the page. Or you can just thank him for 64bits!

druban wrote:Partha Bagchi of Partha.com has been kind enough to compile 0.48.4 in a 64 bit Windows version

That's the latest stable release version.

druban wrote:Partha may be using the official release or an even older version of the code, because some enhancements are missing, like the keyboard customization in preferences and the measure tool.

See above: he uses the latest stable release version - new features like keyboard shortcut editor and measure tool are only available in unstable development builds (aka trunk).

druban wrote:I have no idea if those enhancements are in the official release now but I really thought they were.

No - not yet (they will be part of the next major release: 0.49).

~suv! Thanks for the confirmation. I thought that might be the case but it is so out of character for Partha not to be using the most recent additions to trunk - his GIMP builds are usually quite cutting edge.

I'm going to give the 64bit version a whirl too. Thank-you for the link, druban.