Martin,
Heck I thought I shot and scored on this mega workstation I bought with a single Xeon QuadCore running a 3 ghz and reconfigured for RAID 1 for extra data safety. But man two quad cores you really should really be set for quite some time, which is great. How much RAM did you get with that thing and did you get it set up "balanced" (I think they probably did) so all the cores have an equal amount of it to play with? That'll make it sing to the best of it's potential. Mine came with a gig a piece for a total of four, and in that setup as you watch the task manager, neither the cores nor the RAM really get tax at all. All those squiggly lines are right along the bottom for the most part. Darn thing is just walking at a slow after dinner pace. You're must be almost unregisterable on those little screens.
This is how I have always bought my computers. Build 'em big and strong sort of towards the top of the heap, because what seems like "oh you'll never out grow this or you'lll never need that" always comes to pass. The hardware guys build bigger fast computers and then the software guys are falling all over themselves to fill that new hole and around and around they go ever spiraling up and up. You may pay a bit more now, but if you can double the life of your purchase and push it that much further before it is time to put it out to pasture I think you still come out way ahead in the long run.
Heck the tower I bought five years ago this month was just starting to get a bit long in the tooth recently and with a bump in the RAM it really could have gone longer still. But now I've got a good old machine and a kick@$$ main tower for the data folders. And you get to drive a Hemi at Hemi speeds all those years that the software guys haven't over burdoned the poor thing. And that is time and less frustration.
"Yeah, It's Got a Hemi In It" Enjoy the ride...
Paul
