Perhaps it would be beneficial to know more about your
system.  I am running Win x64 on an Asus A8V, I have Flash
installed, and I can watch streaming video from Yahoo, CNN,
Youtube, and who knows where else.

So, yes, you should hold your breath since I have no idea
what your particular setup is.

I can't see anyone asking you for any advice. Why did you post? You probably
have have no one else other than  the computer to talk to, now that is
pitiful :(

Windows x64 (both XP (which is really a themed Windows Server 2003, it's
from the same codebase) and Vista) have backwards compatibility with 32-bit
applications. However, there are some caveats. The two that are very
important to know are that:

a) You can NOT plug 32-bit drivers into the 64-bit kernel (the core of the
Windows OS). I'm not a programmer, so I can't give you specific indepth
reasons; I suspect there are some legitimate technical reasons and maybe
some stability reasons (or both). This limitation is partly why driver
support is so lacking (new drivers must be developed for x64 versions of
Windows). Thus, the problem so many of us have when migrating, finding the
damn drivers for our hardware, assuming they exist at all.
b) You can NOT "mix-and-match" between 32-bit and 64-bit binaries. For
example, you can't plug a 64-bit DLL into a 32-bit application. This is why,
for instance, Windows x64 has a 32-bit version of Internet Explorer and a
separate 64-bit version. You can't plug a 32-bit Flash plugin into a 64-bit
version of Internet Explorer. Hence, you're stuck using IE 32-bit for most
tasks, until plug-in developers bother to port their code to 64-bit. (This
very much applies to you vidmark)

As far as hardware support goes, I highly recommend, for a desktop machine,
building the system yourself piece by piece, if you have the expertise.
Vendor support for x64 is woeful in my experience, with many, many
manufacturers selling 64-bit "capable" machines, but without the 64-bit
driver support that is required. By building your machine piece by piece,
you can ensure that 64-bit drivers are available for each and every piece of
hardware to be installed in your system. It takes time, but you'll end up
with a machine that is fully 64-bit compatible, with associated drivers,
which you can continually update as the respective OEM of each hardware
component provides updated drivers.

As for Norton, it used to be great, it went downhill from when it was bought
up by Symantec. I'm not saying it can't detect virus's, it does that very
well. My complaint is the performance hit, whenever I've used Norton
products in recent years, the performance hit has been huge, and the
software is very intrusive. I like to keep my computers very streamlined,
and Norton doesn't really satisfy that criteria ;)

Bottom Line: OEM's need to get their act together and start taking x64
support seriously. My view is that this isn't really a fault of Microsoft's.
They've developed the 64-bit OS, it's now up to developers to choose when
(if?) they are going to seriously support it.