Bond indeed has the PP is certain Dr No scenes. I think it's the PPK when shoots Professor Dent ("That's a Smith & Wesson, and you've had your six." Great line).
I was surprised to discover that the 7.65 round is but .32. You'd think Bond would be equipped with at least 9mm (which he used in Goldfinger, a Walther P-38). But what the PPK has that fits is it's svelte. Like Bond. Besides, Bond is a superhero. He doesn't need heavy, bulky cumbersome artillery inside his jacket. He can hit a man in the head at 50 yards easy. On the run. Both of them.
The PPK will always be the Bond gun and rightly so, IMHO.

Can I just throw this in here?
Why does Bond STILL use a Walther PPK? Hasn't there been any development in the gun industry for the past 50 years? Aren't there better, small guns out there now?
I find that so weird that pistols seem to be timeless.

I like the PPK. It's small, sleek and stylish (just like Bond).
He has no real need for a massive gun with huge stopping force, particularly because as a highly skilled marksman he'd be capable of using that tiny gun with far better results than 99% of people would with any gun.
Finally, Bond is a British character. He relies far more on his wit, charm and charisma than his gun. He'd much rather talk his way out of a situation than shoot his way out. When he does use it, it tends to be out of necessity rather than choice. Plus in the 60s, having any gun pointed at you would have been enough, so size didn't matter. He had far more need for a small concealed gun that he could whip out at a moments notice than some hand-cannon.
Now, if he'd been an American character no doubt we'd see him running around with a huge .50 calibre or some kind of automatic weapon.
If you aren't replying to my post, don't click reply.

I think me said it was because the beretta jammed during one of James previous mission landing him in the hospital for six months.

So, really, if there's anybody the OP should be getting angry at, it's Geoffrey Boothroyd.

My knowledge of guns is minuscule at best (I know the important stuff like do not be looking into the end with the hole when you pull the trigger) but which gun is which I have no idea.
Having said that, I do know a little something about the history of Bond. In the first several books Bond used a Beretta. A man named Geoffrey Boothroyd, a British Firearms expert and James Bond book fan (the movies had not yet come out) wrote a letter to Ian Flemming explaining that Bond should not be using a Berretta.
Flemming changed Bond's gun based on correspondence with this man. In fact, he named the arms expert after Mr. Boothroyd as a thank you to him.
There are a few articles on the net about this so you can have fun looking up the specifics.

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Bond likes to have concealable weapons, it seems.
In Tomorrow Never Dies, when he reaches the Chinese secret service armoury, he picks out for himself a Walther P99, when you can see FAMAS assault rifles , and FN P90 submachine guns there.

There is on old joke in the firearm community that goes like this:
It's 1965 and a British spy, Russian spy and American spy all meet in a Monte Carlo casino. What gun are they carrying?
The answer is: the Walther PPK.
At the time it was one of the best concealment guns around and many of the intelligence agencies issued them to their operatives. It was a flat, concealable double action pistol that could be carried loaded with the hammer down and the safety off.
While the OP may not like the choice of a 7.65mm, you also have to remember that most of Europe used that caliber in issue firearms. Ammunition would be much easier to come by than 9mm which was a military round and not available to the public or the .45 ACP which would have been, practically non-existent outside the US.
A previous poster mentions a .22 and it should be said that the Israeli Mossad uses the .22 short almost exclusively and has something like a 94% kill ratio. It's all a matter of placement.
He who fights and runs away, lives to run away again!

All of the previous posts are accurate in their way.
And all of you posters know a lot more about guns than Ian Fleming, who didn't know . about guns.
Weirdest of all the guns: the Nambu. Big, hard to conceal and it needed ammo that was almots unknown outside Japan.
Nobody likes you. Everybody hates you. You're gonna lose. Smile, you f.ck.

Do people forget Bond is a spy, not a commando? He walks around in a suit with his pistol in a shoulder holster. Personally, I would have given him a Smith & Wesson Centennial Model 40 or 42.
He'd only have 5 rounds, but he'd have a .38 Special at least. The other option would have been a Walther P38, but at 8.5" that's +1.5" inches longer than a PPK.
A Tokarev is 7.6" in length so once again the PPK is easier to conceal. Same goes with the Hi-Power at 7.8".
There wasn't really a lot of great choices for an easy to conceal pistol.
Oddly enough the Makarov would probably have been the best choice, as it would offer more punch, and if he was in the Eastern Bloc he'd have lots of access to ammo.

"point of fact- if you shoot someone even with a .22, depending on where you hit them, they will die."
I can only agree to a certain extend.
People who get shot by a .22 will probably, but not necessarily, die, sooner or later (often it's more later than sooner), .. unless they make it to a hospital in time . or someone helps them to get better . or .
We're not talking about a gun to simply kill people, but about one that makes sense in a combat situation.
In combat it's not about killing other people. It's about preventing people from shooting at you or others.
If you hit your enemy with a .22 anywhere but the head, he will probably have plenty of time and energy to shoot back. Or do no good in other ways. And that's something you don't want to happen.
(Btw, there's plenty of examples in real-life for people even taking a.22 bullett in the head and surviving.)
If you shoot someone, you want that to be the end of him bothering you, don't you?
Nobody likes you. Everybody hates you. You're gonna lose. Smile, you f.ck.

Those who wish to bash Ian Fleming should at least learn to spell his name correctly.

Everyone seems to forget that plenty of hitmen, including Richard Kuklinski, have used small caliber firearms to dispatch victims. Matter of fact some even preferred them to larger caliber guns, point of fact- if you shoot someone even with a .22, depending on where you hit them, they will die.

Bond needed a reliable and concealable weapon that would do the job (it's shot placement, not simply impact powersomething that people always seem to forget) and the PPK fit the bill.
This was in a time before today's micro 9mm's and .45's calibers. If you were wearing a suit or tux, a big automatic would stand out like a sore thumb.
Bad films are a crime against humanity.

I'll have to agree that the PPK in .32 definitely doesn't have a "delivery like a brick through a plate glass window" but it's still an improvement from a friggin' .25! I would rather use a .22lr if I was an assassin over a .25! I used to own a small Beretta .25 and disliked it very much. (The slide would pinch the skin between my thumb and index finger when it moved back after I shot) I agree though with everyone else here about the sleek style of the PPK though, it's an extremely handsome gun. I am lucky enough to own an early '60s PPK in .32 that my grandfather bought from the Walther factory in Germany (Still with the original alligator skin style box and even the receipt!) and have to admit that it's my favorite gun in my entire collection.
Interesting side note: I used the money that I sold the Beretta .25 for to put towards my Walther P99 QA with the olive drab polymer frame in 9mm! (Yes I'm sort of obsessed with JB and his guns lol)
My DVD Collection: http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=8504358

Talking of the Bren Gun on the Boat - wasn't the curved magazine in back to front? i.e. it was facing the firer as opposed to facing away from him.

Yes, that is the longer barreled Walther PP in some scenes.
Check out imfdb.org (The Internet Movie Firearms Database) for the exact scenes and all your other Firearm in Film needs.

yeah, we all know about that.
BUT thats just another clue, Flemming didnt know a thing about guns:
The Beretta jammed and therefore Bond was almost killed by Rosa Klebb.
So what?
That happens.
Even the best pistol isnt perfect and even the best pistol can be loaded with a round that wont go off.
Do we have to believe, Bond has never been taught how to clear a stovepipe?
Nobody ever told him, "well Commander Bond, just hypothetical, . Im not saying something like that could ever happen, but lets think about it for a second,.. you know, . just in case, .. lets say, youre trying to fire your pistol and it just wont fire, then PULL BACK THE FING SLIDE and try it again, you shmock!!!"?
Nobody likes you. Everybody hates you. You're gonna lose. Smile, you f.ck.

I don't know the pros and cons of different side arms but M made Bond change his weapon because the Beretta let him down badly on his last mission which was From Russia With Love. The films were not in the same order as the books of course

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Havent read the book for some 20 years, but I still remember, I went "WTF, that Flemming-guy doesnt know jack", when I read that list of guns.
The Tokarev isnt all bad, when you think about it.
I mean, even in the 50ies, there were some dozens of better pistols available, but the Tokarev would make kind of sense for missions behind the iron-curtain.
I think the weirdest choice would have been the Nambu.
Thats not even a small pistol like the Walther or the Sauer.
As far as I remember, a Nambu is basically the size of a Hi-Power or a Colt Government.
And then the caliber! Imagine, you would have to get some ammo in places like Monaco, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Switzerland, for that strange piece of crap.
How could someone come up with stuff like that?
By the way, do you remember, when Connery took a Nambu from that guy in the casino in "Never say never again"?
Nobody likes you. Everybody hates you. You're gonna lose. Smile, you beep.

I can't keep up with the movies, but I remember the books. You know, actually written by Fleming? In his first Bond books his protagonist is supposed to carry a Beretta .25 auto, possibly a Model 1919 (Bond carried this pistol during WWII) but could be a 318. In early stories Fleming has Bond keeping a .38 short barrel revolver under his pillow. In the only story (From a View to Kill) in which Bond knows he will be in a gun fight he chooses a Colt New Service .45.
Fleming should have stopped here. The choice of the Walther goes like this: M's greatest firearms expert presents his picks for the best carry pistols: T33 Tokarev; Nambu 14; Sauer M38; Walther PP/K. This is straight out of the book From Russia With Love. Have you stopped laughing yet?

"A Hi-Power is no easy CC weapon"
As is the Walther P5 (used by Connery in "Never say never again" and Moore in "Octopussy") or the Walher P99 (used by Brosnan in almost every of his Bond-movies except for "Golden Eye")
Bond should have tried a pancake-holster instead of these shoulder-holsters.
By the way, did you notice; he got a new gun, but kept the old holster?
"It's a sidearm, almost the same size as a 1911. Basically, it is a double-action, double stack mag 1911."
The Hi-Powers that were around in the 60ies were basically SINGLE-action, double stack mag 1911.
I dont know, whether they had hollow point ammunition back i the 60ies, but Id say, Q should have gotten some of the first ones.
And by the way one of the 1st kinds of 9mm-ammo, even before WW1 was a truncated cone bullett, which would have done the job.
"Why didn't he take the Sten?"
Bond is a snob, isnt he?
He rarely ever picks up a more powerful gun in the old movies.
I think Ive never seen Bond using anything bigger than the small kit-rifle before "The spy who loved me".
Then again in "For your eyes only" Colombo and his men use Sterling SMGs and Bond goes for the crappy PPK again
Again, they could have given him at least a .380 ACP