What I'm waiting for is Mandrake Linux or Red Hat Linux for AMD64. Linux and most apps for it are much more ready for AMD64 then Windows.

This I see is going to be a political game between the arc rival Intel and a young generation processor maunfacturer - AMD with Microsoft as the mediator of the game. I forsee something more here in the actual trend of hardware manufacturing that, Microsoft seems to be in love with AMD more than Intel but unwilling to disclose his secret ambition to the public for the fear of the AMD critics like Intel. What I forsee later in the course of these rapid developments, continual change in standards and formats is that, another Windows must be developed for Intel processors in case they decided to adopt AMD's x86-64 code of backward compactability with 32bit processing codes. I see the bridge Microsoft build in deciding to either optimise the Windows XP 2003 designed for AMD Opteron and Athlon 64 with a service pack or a kind of operation that would make it compactable somehow with the processors of Intel. I could also see the Windows once this step is taken, the chip may experience occassional crash with will mean a lot of deal for AMD as Intel fans will then say the processor is not fully compactable with x86-64 codes and therefore consider AMD in subtitution. I see Intel making a demand on a different brand of Windows to be optimised for their processors and this would mean another world of competition all-together for the two sides.In my own opinion, I doubt if Microsoft would consider this request from the prime chip maker. If the bid of AMD's Opteron and Athlon 64 is accepted by the OEMs and Intel delay in the release of the x86-64, and Microsoft goes ahead to release the Windows version optimised for AMD, it would mean that Intel has too much to lose. At least Microsoft will always have the best selling Operating System and for the sake of Microsoft if not for AMD, people will be compelled to go for the new Windows on the platform of AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron. It will then implies that the popularity of the AMD chips will be made especially if the benchmarks would outwit the Intel prescort processors on the 32bit codes. At this point Intel may lose up to 40 - 50% of their customers including the most notoriously loyal boy to them -Dell.