Love it. ;)

Apart from bragging rights, is there any point in having quad cores on desktops?

I have a couple of dual core boxes here and the only thing that appears to actually use both cores fully is the folding@home smp client.

Quad Core on the desktop? That depends on what you use your desktop for. Your average Wanking-and-Banking users don't need quad cores, obviously, but some of us will use whatever CPU you give us for VisualHub, Handbrake, Virtual Machines, etc. The more the merrier!

Are they tearing a page out of AMD's book on how not to release new chips...

and yes, four cores is worth it just for cutting the video rendering that I do

"Porkies" - class!

Point taken. ;)

In my defence, when I see desktop I think home users and general office work, what you describe I think workstation.

Wankers and Bankers? I'm having trouble seeing a difference between those two at this moment in time. ;)