F!F!F! 482 12/09/05

DELINQUENT DIPHTHONG

I have tried in vain to find the combination of the Alt plus numeric pad keys to produce the lower case diphthong œ. The upper case and lower case diphthong Æ and æ are respectively Alt plus 146 and 145.

Peter Stovin.

A

No problem, there is a trick to diphthongs in Word, press Ctrl + Shift + & then the first letter of the diphthong you want to appear on the page. For example, to produce a lower case œ the key sequence is Ctrl + Shift + & release the keys then press o. For the upper case version press shift o, for Æ it’s Ctrl + Shift + & then shift a.

09/09/05

HYPERTHREAD HYPE?

I run Windows XP Pro. Hyperthreading seems to function fine but I have heard that this is less so with XP Home (I want to advise someone who has a XP Home PC), which begs the question why resellers hype-up the benefits of HT but sell systems running Home.  Is it true that HT does not function with XP Home, and if so, why?

Greatly appreciate Bootlog.co.uk!!

Chris McDonald

A

Thanks for the kind words Chris, and congratulations on being the first victim of the all-new Facts! Faqs! Fax! section of the website. You are opening a can of worms with your Hyperthreading question so first let’s explain what it is and what it does.

Hyperthreading processors have a second ‘virtual’ CPU, so they can effectively do two jobs at once -- many hands make light work and all that -- and this feature is fully supported by Windows XP Home. The reason for the confusion is that XP Home supports only one physical CPU whereas XP Pro works with multiple processors, which scoot along even faster, compared with virtual processors and therefore benefit more from Hyperthreading technology. To check if Hyperthreading is enabled look in Device Manager (right-click My Computer > Properties > Hardware) and under Computer the CPU will be described as a ‘Multiprocessor PC’