Multitasking & HP’s xw4300
Wanted to comment on Trevor’s mention of HP’s xw4300 workstation in a couple of his postings (Jan 20th).
I have my own xw4300, running a dual-core Pentium D (you can get one with a single core Pentium 4, but why bother? See the following.).
So why choose a dual core workstation? One word: Multitasking.
While a faster CPU might make a difference in some situations, if you’re anything like me, a day at the computer is less about speeding through one action and more about doing many things at once, jumping among various programs, checking something on Google, buying and downloading an image or video file from the ‘net– all things that can tie up the standard, single-core CPU, since everything has to go through that one gateway.
With a dual core CPU, one of the pair can work in the background, downloading, compressing, rendering, and doing whatever other intensive chores you need. This makes even more sense if, again, you’re like me, and run dual monitors. I can keep windows open and active without worrying about my interactivity taking a nose dive.
