Dual Core ?

[1rovert]

As I just use my computer for a few odd files, photo's and personal finance. The odd letter etc:

What can a computer with dual core really do for me?

[ACtheTROLL]

oddly - not much other than dent your bank balance

The current mobile phone mentality makes many people think that just because it's new - they have to have one ...
and then you see their posts here - just got ... can't use

from what you say about your useage ... as long as you can use XP at a reasonable speed ... and maybe connect USB devices and a printer that's all you need

I do have a big hairy machine (mainly games) but at the mo I'm using an old lappy with XP. It won't run any games that need fancy graphics - but it runs office, explorer and quicken - just what I need

[VHG]

Like AC I have an old desktop I built in 2005 that is fine for general office work.

It runs a single core AMD CPU, has 1Gb of memory, and runs Windows XP.

It is fine for surfing the web, email and general office work.

You have to remember that the computer industry (like the clothing industry and electronics industry) needs to sell new stuff each year to make money.

I would say 90% of the people out there who use computer DONT need dual core (or quad core), and could quite happily work on a 5 year old computer.

[VHG]

You should also remember that while CPUs and other computer components have got faster, Vista has got bloated and slower.

Anything you gain in performance with a new computer is lost by having Vista on it.

A 5 year old computer running XP is probably just a fast as a new computer running Vista (maybe faster).

[fo3nix]

It won't do much for you right now.

Software has to be written to take advantage of many cores, but this is a far from simple thing. Software development has for the main part, up to a few years ago, been single core.

Mac OS X (Tiger and Leopard but especially the upcoming Snow Leopard) has some support for dual core systems. Windows has a little less support (especially with respect to Snow Leopard). Linux can utilise several cores, but again the software has to be written to make use of these cores.

The idea is that any parallel tasks can be put on several cores. You could even keep one core free for interface processing, and the rest for actual computation. That way, the display always feels responsive to you.