Hypthreading is just taking advantage of the fact that with the intel cpu’s they can be spending a bit of time doing nothing waiting for data. So they make that cpu time “available” for other things. Yes it can provide a little boost when you’re doing more than one thing at a time. Ie running winamp or similar, downloading, and browsing, but not a big boost.

Having several real cpu’s or cores would provide a much bigger boost. I’ve got a dual cpu set up, 2 single cores, and i can unrar several gigs of stuff, listen to music, download, and browse without there being any noticeable impact on any single task ;o)