[K12OSN] Real Culprit

[Liam Marshall]

I began this thread under the subject, bottleneck Question.  I am 
starting a new thread for a variety of reasons.  Thanks to Les and 
others, I have narrowed down some of the problems, now I would like some 
clarification

Today I had 28 grade 7 students all log in at the exact same time, this 
made the log in process slow for everyone.  CPU usage went to 100% for a 
while, and memory usage went close to 100%  1.9GB used out of 2GB

After all got in, the cpu usage went down, but memory stayed very high.  
Then they went into oowriter, again with real slow down.  Once they were 
in and doing their individual assignments, TOP showed cpu usage of about 
10-12% but memory stayed maxed at 1.9 out of 2

If I stagger the time for entering oowriter, ei allowing 5-6 to click on 
it at the same time, speed is acceptable, but unrealistic for teaching 
purposes.  Teachers need to give instructions and the kids need to be 
able to execute instructions near the same time.  "OK, class, everyone 
start oowriter..." or similar is a standard method, but it leads to near 
simultaneous accessing/starting of programs.

Whether it is and OpenOffice app , or Mozilla, or something as silly as 
Super Tux Racer, both cpu and memory seem to be maxing out, at least 
temporarily when programs are loading, then the cpu use usually settles 
down, (except for the games which seem to keep the cpu use maxed, but 
then again I don't care much about that, I am not teaching game play)

My long winded question is this.  Both cpu and memory max at some 
point.  I have ordered more memory, to increase memory to 4GB,  My 
existing motherboard will handle that, but it won't handle upgrading cpu

It is only a single cpu multithreading 3.06.  If I need to do that 
upgrade I need to buy a board and cpu's. 

Question:  Nothing but upgrading to a true dual cpu will stop the cpu 
usage from maxing out, right?  I mean, no matter how much memory I get, 
if the cpu maxes, even temporarily, it will always do that, right?

sorry for the long winded preamble, I am just trying to get my head 
around paying the extra money