Luke, to take the devil's advocate appproach, it would seem that only
old cpu's don't have hardware multiply (I've no idea about new cut down
CPU's like ARM/MIPS and I'm sure someone will correct me if I've over-
generalized) and while we shouldn't penalise old architectures, atj
some point we need to start designing and writing code that takes
advantage of new capabilities.  That's going to have some cost, but
if it makes a 10yr old computer slower while making a computer bought
today faster, I know what I'd prefer.

darren