Multi-processor is huge in the server and calculation
markets. It is worth paying for in the home video
processing market, which is a calculation task.
It is less convincing in the office PC market.
Still, people use to love Dual Pentium Pro workstations,
because it let them get on with their life while downloading
mail or some other slow task.
I certainly would not pay for hyper-threading on a
workstation, that has no place on a workstation, as
lots of people have discovered.
Linux uses a different thread affinity algorithm. MS might
change as more cores become more common. I wouldn't
like to predict the future, except to say the MS already
has a database product which scales across multiple cores
-- I don't see them changing Access/Jet to cannibalize that
market.
(david)