A) most new computers support 64-bit
CPU's that are 64-bit:
AMD Athlon64
AMD Athlon64 FX
AMD Opteron
Intel Pentium 4 Sequence 6
Intel Pentium D (also dual core)
Intel Pentium 4 EE 3.43, 3.73, 840 (first Dual core CPU on the market (currently, unless some1 releases to market a dual core chip in the next month)
Intel Itanium2 (has been for YEARS, but it's not x86 compatable, it's IA-64, which means it needs a differnt type of software to do anything, not to mention the $1200 price tag, for the cheap one, so Itanium will never see desktop)
Longhorn is probably going to use:
4-8GB of RAM
1TB HDD (not fill, but it will be like using a 250GB HDD in XP (guessing, and no i'm not saying Longhorn is huge, i'm saying to keep things proportiante, and 1TB HDD is proportiante (-ish) to 8GB)
Dual Core CPU (cannot wait for Presler...65nm, dual core, fully native, not bolt together like Smithfeild...only down side - it's Intel)
High end GFX card (R520 class, or better, R520 would utterly smash Radeon X or GeForce 6800 (Even SLI) btw)
ALSO
Longhorn WILL be released May 2006, MS is VERY VERY firm on this
the word has "come down from up high" that Longhorn is going out in May
and it will
search google if you want info
BTW
rumors on the net indicate that Longhorn might have a monthly or yearly subscription fee
in which case, most of us will probably be using SuSE, Mandrake, RH, Linspire, FreeBSD or any of a number of *IX or BSD based distros, or Apple might make a BIG comeback (i could see the majority of users moving to Apple OS if Windows wanted a monthly fee, because Apple offers support (As they are a company for profit) while an OS like...FreeBSD, does not offer much support (as it's a freeware program)
if most users moved to Apple
I could see most software being devoloped fully for Apple
this is just something to keep in your mind
idk if MS will go so far as a subscription service
the majority of people i know (even complete computer novices) would switch away from Windows if they had to pay a monthly fee just to use their computer
i'd rather use Apple OS X and pay $4k for a dual G5, than use Windows and pay even as low as $10/mo for as long as I owned the PC (and I always am the END USER, i have to yet to give away or sell hardware (unless it's broken, at which point it's donated to BFI Disposal)