On Tue, 2005-05-31 at 09:41 +0200, Dunceor . wrote: > I don't defend them and say this is a good thing but a hardware > supplier can never force you to use a specific OS.
I wouldn't be so quick to say this. Apple can make it damn near impossible to run anything except MacOS and it is in fact in their interest to do so as both the Macintosh computers and MacOS are their product. Now, in the specific case of Intel, they do not produce an OS to run on their hardware, so there is a bit less motive. However, it's not inconceivable that Intel can completely change how to talk to their chipsets, then decide to only tell Microsoft how and anyone else who asks gets told "buy Windows, that's the only thing that will run on this chipset". The only thing really stopping them, is that competitors such as AMD and VIA (the latter of which now make the Cyrix chip) won't play along, and this might not even be as much of a deterrent as we think it is. I'd really like to think Intel is better than this. Then again, I'm writing this on an old Athlon-based PC... -- Shawn K. Quinn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
