I had not seen hyper-threading before - sounds like intel marketing spin :)

hyper threading as they describe it is still different than multi-threading. Multi-threading as we talked about is a function of the OS but more specifically, the programmer has to create their program to use multiple threads. Most windows software, games, art programs etc are written to be multi-threaded - however it is still up to the programmer to implement this...

from what the intel things says, it looks like they have figured out a way to get the chip to process 2 instructions at once which could be pretty cool if it works like they say...

right now a bottle neck with a processor even if it is a nice new P4 3.0 ghz is that it can only do one thing at a time no matter how fast it does it so this would help get around that barrier.

I would check out some sites like
www.tomshardware.com
www.sharkeyextreme.com

they probably are all over this new technology, bench marking it etc to see if it is really worthy.

as far as the render farm, Dale B had a thread a while ago where we discussed the easiest way to make a home network.

My vote is to use a $50 linksys 4 port router - it allows all your computers to connect to each other and the internet and is very easy to set up.

There are some other brands too like NetGear and others that do the same thing and have similar features. I can dig up a link but you should be able to search buy.com or some site like that for 4 port cable modem/DSL router.