G wrote:

Every version of Windows based on NT (NT, 2000, XP, Server 2k3,
Longhorn, etc) has gotten progressively better at utilizing multiple
CPU's. MS keeps tweaking things to a finer level of granularity. So
minimally, a single threaded application could still hog 1 CPU, but at
least the OS underneath will do it's best to make use of the other
CPU.

A data point. I'm doing nothing much except reading this group and yet
the XP performance monitor shows a queue of 7 or 8 threads ready to run.

I think applications like WORD and Excel already do things like spell-
checking and recalculation in worker threads. I don't find it hard to
believe that a typical Windows box would benefit from 4+ "processors".