Nope - AMD's AMD64 bit processor is giving Intel such a hotfoot that Intel has tied (unsuccessfully) to clone it and call it the IAMD64.
Intel Itanium is a coffee cup warmer and little else, AMD64 desktops are literally flying off the shelves of the computer stores for the bank for the buck, AMD has hit 58% of desktop computer sales for 01/04 quarter for the first time. Intel is doing their usual strong-arming to manufacturers esp to laptop makers, and of course Dell is the un-official outlet for Intel dumb & crippeled Celeron processor.
I'm constantly amazed how people can be fooled into buying a Celeron which is like buying a 4 cylinder car but with 2 cylinders disabled by intent.
yeah, AMD rules and IS the real innovator here.
The move from 32 to 64 bits is ridiculously overhyped. It's far less significant than the move from 16 to 32 bits. I would rather the CPU makers focus on application specific technology like SSE/2/3 and clean up that mess. Another important area is dual-core cpus. But nooooo, 64 bits gives everyone in the press (like Dvorak) a hard-on so now that's the focus. What a waste.
Celerons are fine for low end users. My wife's machine is an ancient P2-based 400MHz Celeron and it's perfectly adequate for web browsing, email, and writing documents (running XP).
Anyway, the CPU world is getting stale. The real innovation/advancement is taking place in 3d graphics chips. Within the next decade we'll see raytracer hardware of some kind. Now, if Intel pour research money into that we'd see a huge advance in user interfaces.