OK, here is my take on this: I don't have lots of money, so I can't always afford the biggest and baddest CPU, etc. Why bother with a 64-bit processor when there won't be a Windows Operating system that will take advantage of the 64-bit processor for another year or two? By then we'd likely have another couple generations of "bigger and badder" CPU's anyway. It makes more sense for me to save up for a "full fledged" Athlon, rather than a Duron CPU, and get up to 1GB of RAM. Oh, yes, and get at least one larger hard drive!