The machine came with 64 bit win7. The laptop spec sheet says it has a 64 bit
amd e-240 cpu.

I may be confused by the virtualbox download page. It says.....

"To install VirtualBox anyway you need to setup a 64-bit chroot environment."

Admittedly, I'm not entirely sure what this means as I am still learning the
linux dialect. The virtualbox download page shows i386 and amd64 versions for
10.04 LTS.