Nice laptop. I work on these all the time and they got best bang for your buck on some review websites. 17" is a little big imho but if it's going to be sitting still for the most part, no need to worry. I had the older Gateway MP78__ series. Great laptop and doesn't come with a bunch of useless junk. I recently gave it to my parents and got myself a 15" Lenovo.

I was checking out the specs - does it have a wireless card?
This laptop does have wireless, even comes with the next gen wireless, "N".

64bit Windows is not really different than 32bit except the limitation of 32bit being 3.5 gb of RAM. Microsoft minimized the compatibility issues between the 2 operating systems by making the 64bit OS virtualize or simulate the 32bit operating system for certain programs. Only problem I ever ran into is older games. If you just word process, go on the internet and check email then its no problem at all. As long as you don't try using extremely old programs or games for that matter, you'll be fine.