[POLL] To continue 64 or not?

["Andrew Robinson" <andrew.rw.robinson@gmail.com>]

Looking for some constructive feedback on other people's experiences
with amd64 as a workstation. I have been only using it a few weeks,
and the setup is a pain due to the amount of 32 bit only programs. I
am having some issues with:

Eclipse + ExadelStudio plugin (plugin is 32-bit only)
Firefox + Flash (Flash is 32-bit only)
OpenOffice
Cedega
Wine

Unfortunately, this makes up a decent percentage of what I run daily
(especially eclipse). I am the type to sacrifice pain for new
functionality, but this one has got me thinking, is it worth it?

As a server I would think it would be great but as a workstation it
seems to be a pain. The chroot jail works, but having to maintain the
apt libraries (I am using etch, so they change fairly often), it more
of a pain.

For those that have the knowledge, I know that the 64 bit architecture
is faster due to addressing and such, but is it that noticeable? Also,
I have read that the 32 kernel still supports the dualcore nature of
the amd64 even though running in 32 bit mode (is this true, my source
wasn't 100% reliable).

Just looking for some constructive feedback on other's opinions.

-Andrew