Agreed. At this point, X-box seems to have moved MSFT slightly, done nothing for INTC, hurt AMD. But: it's a year and a half away, and in that time frame, 600mhz processor means very low end, relative to mainstream PCs. Low cost, low margin, it'd be nice buzz-wise for AMD to be in the running, but I still think AMD would be much better off getting enough high perf. chipset level support in place rather than chasing something that's still a bit vaporous.
Not that I think X-box is a bad idea, even. It puts MSFT in an interesting position, building what's basically its own cheap PC. If it's got a 100bt ethernet interface, and it would be stupid not to, with broadband home access coming online, it'd work fine for business too. Graphic overkill of course, but the "consumer NT" with support for myriad random hardware stripped out would probably be a lot more reliable (well in principle anyway) that Win9x, and it shouldn't have any problem running Office and a web browser.
It'll be interesting to watch how it plays out.
Cheers, Dan. |
