GUI

[Colin McGregor]

"Peter L. Peres" <plp-ysDPMY98cNQDDBjDh4tngg at public.gmane.org> on Sunday, November 30, 2003 2:57 PM
wrote:

>
> On Sat, 29 Nov 2003, William Park wrote:
>
> > So far, Korean (federal) and German (municipal) government decided to
> > try Linux.  This means Intel CPU, also.  Where are the commies when you
> > really need them?
>
> This is not to do with commies. Some of us aren't. And Intel is not a real
> monopoly. I have never owned an Intel made cpu since I had an XT
> (AMD8088), and till now (still on AMD and will likely stay on AMD). I do
> not have a problem with HW vendors because their price wars are bound to
> physical products and are not as amenable to dirty marketing tricks as
> software. They have to keep the cash flowing or those wafer fabs will have
> to be closed so competition works there, even if it's cutthroat many
> times.

Well, Intel could pull a lot of the same dirty (read illegal) tricks that
Microsoft has pulled and no doubt in short order crush the likes of AMD and
several other chip makers. Intel doesn't do the sort of tricks Microsoft is
(in)famous for. In fact Intel has an in-house antitrust compliance office
dedicated to making sure Intel doesn't stray do, or say the sorts of things
that could land them in hot water with U.S. federal regulators. This is all
not because Intel are nice folks, but rather even if successful they know
what an antitrust suit would cost.

So Intel continues along with 80-90% of the desktop PC CPU market, viewing
the other 10-20% of the market as the price they pay to keep the government
off their back and they are quietly making buckets of money. It also means
that the vast majority of the computer market views them with respect (even
in some case affection) unlike Microsoft...

Me? With the exception of an old Sun IPX box (powered by a SPARC chip) all
my current home machines are Intel based, and I am not complaining, as the
have been reliable, and give good value for the money (unlike what I would
say about my Microsoft running box)...

Colin McGregor

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