If you feel that you can get it to work, by all means go ahead. Like I said, I believe all major programs have 64bit versions at the ready.
Most of the flack that 64bit OSses get nowadays comes from the abundance of programs that do not have 64bit versions, so be prepared to sacrifice some functionality in that regard.
Also, Vista isn't that horrible. Its just that most people (myself included, for my desktop anyway) don't see any reason to spend hundreds to upgrade, so the adoption rate has been slow, so driver development has been slow, so people think it sucks. You can see the vicious cycle.