Vmware is a great way of testing -- incidentally you CAN actually run a 64 bit Guest OS on a 32 Bit Host so long as your CPU runs 64 bit instructions and you've enabled the INTEL VT in the Bios (or is enabled by default).
My first effort at running Windows 7 X-64 was as a Virtual Machine on an XP laptop --CPU was dual INTEL 7250 Laptop equipped with 4GB RAM.
W7 X-64 guest ran fine even on the XP Host.
There's a utility on the vmware site which can quickly check whether your Computer can run a 64 Bit Guest virtual machine --even if it says you can't you might be able to enable the Intel VT in the BIOS.
Cheers
jimbo
