You're welcome.
Just to add my $0.02 on some of the other peoples' comments --
Quad core benefit -- well I have quads, duals, and singles which I use every day, so
I'm pretty well versed in the real world differences in performance.
Now I *do* use high performance computing with multi-threaded applications frequently, and *of course* the quad core CPUs are overwhelmingly advantageous there. However often I'm just doing normal desktop computing. A few web browser windows / tabs open. A couple of PDF reader windows open. A couple of downloads happening. The OS running. An instant messenger running. My anti-virus / anti-spyware stuff running. A shell prompt running. My text editor or office application running to read/write some document. My email client running. Now even if all of those things were purely single threaded applications, well, that's already several individual applications, and each one may have more than one tab/window open at once. With my quad core box (which also has plenty of RAM) is used and I switch from one window to another window, e.g. go from my email to selecting a browser tab, it is generally instantaneously responsive and smooth. With my single core box it OFTEN grinds to a halt and there are annoying delays just switching between already open applications or opening a new email message or browser tab. If one of the applications is "busy" like running a search or scan then the benefit of the quad is even more apparent. This ALONE is enough to justify a $250 Q6600 over a $200 E8400 to me, for instance.
Future proofing -- well you have to pick your strategy. In today's market it has very little incremental cost disincentive to go from high end dual to high end quad CPU, so the choice as to which is likely to serve better in the future is an obvious consideration. Almost nobody wants to replace their main PC more often than every 2-4 years, it's expensive, and if you do a good job selecting the original configuration, finding good values, and prudently choosing a few minor upgrades along the way, there's no reason a PC shouldn't last 5 years as a perfectly servicable useful system. That's a reasonable level of "future proofing" -- pick something that will be useful, servicable, suitable, and a good value over its expected operating lifetime, and try to maximize the life expectancy given reasonable cost/benefit tradeoffs. Investing into DDR3, X48 chipsets, multi-CPU-socket motherboards, et. al. today is not a good value since although it'd be more "future proof" the return on the incremental investment costs of getting those technologies is not good because of high price premiums on those technologies at this time and low relative benefit of those technologies over the much lower cost more established competitive older generation technologies.
You can buy a 500GB SATA drive for about the same cost as an 160GB PATA drive today, so, again, the choice is pretty obvious, get the one with the longer warranty (5y seagate), and get the one with the newer interface, higher capacity, lower power consumption, etc.
Although the choices in today's market don't always make much SENSE, they're there -- when I go to Fry's Video Card Page I am confronted with the options:
EVGA FX5500 PCI 128MB $060.00 after rebate.
EVGA e-GeForce 6200LE 256MB PCI-Express 16x $000.00 after rebate.
BFG 9600GT OC Video Card (512MB, PCI-Express) $199.00
Although ANY of them would work FINE for the majority of internet, office application,
productivity application, email, etc. uses, "today", it's pretty clear that two out of the three
are not even SLIGHTLY "future proof" in that they already won't run even the basic
GUI in Vista Aero, are certainly not going to cut it for the next generation OS, etc.
Also only one of them will really let you play any decent fraction of the video games
or 3D / high definition multimedia content out there.
Now it's hard to beat the value proposition of $0/1 year of use if it does what you
need today but with very little "future proof" reserve of functionality.
No brainer that the $0 option for a NEWER BETTER card is a better deal than the
even LESS future proof $60 option for the older even more obsolete card.
Is the $199 card worth it? Well it WOULD be MUCH more future proof, and so one could see using it in 5 years time for at least basic PC uses. Ok. That's down to $40/year amortized, not too bad. It would also let you play more games and high definition video today, but you may not care. Maybe I'm not comfortable upgrading PC hardware/software myself, so I'm having someone build it for me. Maybe replacing it will take 3 hours downtime that I could be using for something better. Ok, well, it's probably worth SOME money today for a 5 year future proof card over a model that I KNOW I'd likely have to pay (in down time and service/installation costs, shopping/research time, time to install new drivers, etc.) to replace within 1-2 years.
So although one can't and shouldn't future proof PC purchases by expecting to get everything STATE OF THE ART TODAY and expect little depreciation over time, one can certainly factor it in intelligently to avoid being "penny wise, pound foolish" and getting something that is just plainly a bad value that will be obsolete over a 5 year period when one DOES have either much less expensive but still adequate choices today, or SLIGHTLY more expensive but MUCH more future proof/performant choices.
The really confusing part is that the market is flooded with so many choices, all of which SEEM reasonable options, but, really, many of them aren't even worth considering even at slight discounts. Certainly not when 25% more initial cost will get you 200% more performance and 200% more "future proofness".
The market would be a lot less confusing if they weren't still TRYING to sell uninformed consumers Celeron and Core Duo and Pentium 4 CPUs right alongside the modern Quad and Core2Duo CPUs. The $50 Pentium D starts to look like a great deal next to a $199 Core2Duo E8400 if you just go down the marketing checklist... "Both Dual core, check. Both run around 3 GHz, check. Both work in my motherboard. Check. Both run all my applications, check." trouble is one of them will probably cost you $200/year more in power bills and has like 1/4 the performance of the modern one. Oops.
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