I was reading that some people have said dual core is only used in Win XP pro. Is this true at all or in intel or AMD duo cores?
I was under the impression that any duo core proc with any os would run multiple applications without slowing down. Ex. for my simple thoughts would be...
I do layout and graphic work for a local paper. I am constantly switching between a photo editor and quarkXpress all the while transfering files from SD cards or jump drives, printing multiple items. . . basic computing for a newspaper... so, is my duo core proc actually running these things faster at all?
Thanks for the info!

"I was reading that some people have said dual core is only used in Win XP pro. Is this true at all or in intel or AMD duo cores?
I was under the impression that any duo core proc with any os would run multiple applications without slowing down. Ex. for my simple thoughts would be...
I do layout and graphic work for a local paper. I am constantly switching between a photo editor and quarkXpress all the while transfering files from SD cards or jump drives, printing multiple items. . . basic computing for a newspaper... so, is my duo core proc actually running these things faster at all?
Thanks for the info!"

No, that's not true, you can use a dual core CPU with Windows XP Home. Now about the CPU actually running multiple programs at once: a computer never really runs more than one instruction at a time. But the instructions are processed so fast that it seems like that the computer is running several apps at once. To a human, this is perfectly fine and it works very well. You, me, no one can tell that the computer is only processing one instruction after another. The dual core processors allow for two or more (however many cores there are) to run two prrogram threads at once in a TRUE multitasking environment where two threads are being processed at the exact time or at least darn close to it. But the software needs to be written for those types of processor to allow two threads to be processed at once. So far, nothing can do that yet. but in very heavy multitasking environments and where a lot of apps are run at once, a dual core processor does help by taking stress off of one or the other. In a single thread environment (like the ones we have today) the cores flipfop processing. So one core will process one instruction, the other will process the next and so on. But since they both are running at whatever frequency your processor is running at, you may go a little faster. However, for most apps in today's computing environment, a dual core processor gives minimal advantage. But by all means, still get one to futureproof yourself and next generation software will take advantage of multithread computing.

excuse my typing, I'm on a mac keyboard and I can't stand them.

Hi, To simplify: It's kind of like two processors in one chip or two processors on one motherboard. One is the Master. It handles all requests for service and delegates jobs to the other so in effect can process two requests at the same time. Not quite twice as fast, but faster than one processor.

Jim