[ubuntu-uk] Dual-Core = less not more?

[Matthew Macdonald-Wallace]

Hi all,

I was one of the many who purchased the Dell laptops when they shipped
here in the UK with Ubuntu pre-installed.  I've got a Pentium Dual-Core
chip (not a core-duo although I'm not sure what the difference is!)
installed and although /proc/cpuinfo shows both cores as seperate
processors, I'm really not convinced that the dual-core with 1024MB RAM
is faster than my old 1.4GHz with 512MB RAM.

I've got stock Gutsy installed on the laptop (upgraded from feisty using
apt-get dist-upgrade) so if there are any packages that you think would
be more beneficial, please let me know.

One of the things I've stumbled upon in the forums is the possibility of
running x64 on Core2-Duo processors - would that help me here?

Cheers,

Matt.