It seems like, when I click the “Other Downloads” link on this page, that I get a version that is 2.1.3 for 64-bit Windows computers and then a holy hella out-of-date 1.4.2 for 32-bit Windows machines.
Is the nice Picard only for people who’s computers can host more than 4GB of RAM, or am I reading this incorrectly?
Thanks all.
the amount of ram Picard uses is dependent more on how many songs you try adding it it at one time so if you add 100,000 + songs to it it will try to use all the ram that is free if you add 1 song it will use next to nothing. if you have a 32 bit version of windows you MUST use the 32bit version if you have the 64 bit version of windows you can uses either. On a 64 bit version of Windows, 32 bit programs can only access 4 GB of memory each, while 64 bit programs can access much more. hope this helps
Picard 2.0+ is only available as a 64 bit application.
When they moved to picard version 2 they decided to drop for 32 bit builds as they do not have the resources to support this.
Picard 1.x uses python2 and qt 4 and is bundled into a 32 bit application on windows and keeping this working has some overhead.
The older Picard is also very nice. It isn’t that old and you can certainly say it is better tested. No need to discard something because it isn’t the latest shiny thing. 
If you dive in an use it I doubt you will find much that is lacking with it.
It was never a memory issue that caused the abandonment of 32-bit. There was a rebellion among the slaves kept in the dungeon who were supposed to be creating the 32-bit edition and they all escaped. That lack of resources meant a decision was made to abandon the past as fast as Microsoft does. Poor old Windows Vista has been treated just as harshly. Left to fend for itself with the old 32-bit editions.
Just shout if you find anything you can’t do with the 32-bit edition.
But it also has plenty of bugs that have been fixed in the 2.x series 