wbmw, a couple of points -
Overall, I find that you are very intelligently sizing up the competitive position between Intel and AMD, calling it as you see it rather than being reflexive. It is boring to talk about areas where we agree, so on to some points of divergence:
Given the information I had at any given time, I think I had the right mind set. Immediately after AMD's first announcement, I think skepticism was warranted. AMD had no track record for being able to sell a new technology to the industry.
In 2001, AMD was fresh off of the success of selling much of the electronics industry on HyperTransport (especially the router folks, and some consumer electronic firms). This was the breakthrough moment for AMD - they defined a standard that drew a critical mass of followers.
Now, when Hammer was being leaked, I was hopeful but still a bit skeptical. My hopes were based on two things: The huge position x86 has in the market and AMD's success with HyperTransport. Also, AMD was successful in launching their own motherboard design with K7, showing that system board makers would follow an AMD design. Thus there really was quite a bit of evidence that AMD had all the elements to lead the industry to x86-64 if Intel was going to abdicate that responsibility.
I don't see a lot of home users using Windows XP-64. It is just not possible to have robust driver support in that time frame, or even in the year to follow.
Let's think about that a moment. What driver support will the home user need? Advanced video and sound drivers come to mind. These things will be provided in the newer hardware products from all the major vendors, IMO. What else? Basic mass storage drivers are provided by Microsoft. I'm sure they will have 64-bit addressing in their IDE drivers to support disk, CD-RW and DVD-RW drives, it is a simple matter to recompile products like Nero to leverage larger memory spaces. Any hardware built into the motherboard will have drivers made for them.
I'm finding it hard to finger any widely used class of hardware which won't be fully supported under WindowsXP-64. Older models of video and sound boards won't have support, but who is going to buy a machine for 64-bit use and then recycle an old video board? Nahhh - that user will buy a 32-bit Athlon or Celeron instead.
This December there will be OS and applications for 64-bit Windows complete systems. The most sought-after games will be 64-bit. The home user will have the widest variety of 64-bit solutions.
(Although Microsoft Office will probably still require Compatibility Mode.)
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