I am about to upgrade my computer and was just about to get a 3Ghz P4 and 2GB of PC3200 RAM (both are the max that my montherboard handles). Although that will give me more than enough speed at home, I wondered if I should turn the corner and go the 64-bit route and get a new motherboard as well so that I'll be all ready for the future and when I finally get Vista. I guess what I would like to know is if there is there a huge difference between the 32-bit and 64-bit systems?

On a desktop PC, there's not a huge difference. "Large" applications that do enormous amounts of processing will benefit if the app is built as a 64-bit app, but more than likely you'll just have problems with 32-bit apps running correctly in compatibility mode (that's been my experience). You need 64-bit to use more the 4GB of memory, though...

Do some surfin'/searchin' here:
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/

There is plenty of topics covering this there

64bit is a bit of a flop really in my opinion. Not really what it cracked up to be. I just checked NewEgg.com and saw a Quad Core P4 - Drool. When I upgrade soon I'm going with a 'Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz' most likely.

Multi-Core is the way to go if you plan on multi-tasking, which I do a ton of. But you would probably need a new Mobo to support that too tho.

Thanks guys. All good info. The more I thought about it, I just don't use my home computer as much as I used to. I went ahead and bought the parts from newegg to max it out. I'll probably worry about making the big switch when I start my own business which will probably be in a couple years. I thought Vista was only 64-bit, but it looks like you can also get a 32-bit as well.