It make perfect sense to have quick switchboard and immediate access to running applications, But it doesn't to keep them all running all the time. Due to resources consumption and battery drain. Because of that some processes if away from screen or in dashboard mode just in some kind of sleep mode.

True multitasking doesn't exist. Its all software emulation of one stream of instructions. It would be silly to let all 16 apps running on full speed on such small screen factor that you are unable to do anything with them.

check this out
http://www.flaemo.com/test

Yes, you can play 9 movies at once and watch them in dashboard mode. But how useful is that??