Part of this mail is from Philip, which he sent directly to me instead of via the list.
----- "Philip Newborough" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > I take it you've not heard of the term `wintel` then? > > > > Intel is a massive company, which had a monopoly the same sort of > size of Microsoft's desktop share. AMD came in, and started forcing > Intel to shake things up, but till AMD came along, Intel were more > bothered with the size of their profits than innovation and their > customers. > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wintel > > > > In this monopoly battle, AMD is still very much the underdog to > intel's behemoth. Does any of this sound familiar? :) > > > > In terms of battle, I think AMD are more like Firefox & IE than > Windows & Linux, but still you get the idea. > > > > Intel might be trying now to get into the graphics scene, and making > sure that their drivers are open, but AMD has historically been kinder > to the Open Source community, as shown by them buying and then > starting to open ATI. > > > > For some stats and more detailed information: > http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/102607-arguments-intel-amd.html?nwwpkg=50arguments > (no second page, whatever it says...) > > > > Someone far more important than me once said, "One man's terrorist is > another man's freedom fighter." Personally I don't buy into all the > New World Order/Evil Monopoly theories and tend to use whatever works > best for me. Unfortunately, society doesn't work like that always. Intel was not exactly being brilliant at trying to best the new competitor AMD. Remember PIII? I frequently found the PII 450MHz CPU *faster* than PIII 700 MHz chips, in pure usefulness (not speed). PIII was just a marketing "lets win the MHz war with AMD" exercise, and didn't really advance the usefulness of CPUs. Personally, I look at the world, and I see quite a lot of greed for money, and quite a lot of lust for power hanging around. > > I find the whole Wintel/Windoze/M$ mindset to be somewhat destructive > and derogatory. Just my opinion. Besides, I'd hardly call AMD an > underdog, after all they do describes themselves as, "Advanced Micro > Devices, Inc. (AMD) is a global semiconductor company with facilities > worldwide." Intels current share price: $25.74 AMD's current share price: $8.1675 As of Q2 this year, AMD was in the red, incurring a loss (buying ATI [$130m chargers], various stock fun). At the moment, Intels profits are ~£1bn. Intel are currently paying 12.75 cents per share per year in dividends. AMD are not, as they don't have the cash. Each CPU chip factory is *INCREDIBLY* expensive to make. Any big competitor to Intel have to be a global semiconductor company, or be extremely specialised. (ARM mobile CPUs) AMD, as of Q3 this year, have 13.9% of the CPU market share. Intel have 78.7%. Saying that, the reason I'm using Ubuntu, is because I find it easier than Windows. I don't really care about binary drivers, and truly-freely-free systems. I want a computer that works. If I can have that whilst supporting the little guy, I will, but I won't stop using something just because it happens to be evil :) Regards, Kirrus (p.s. I quite like Gmail. I prefer Zimbra tho :)) -- Blog: http://www.kirrus.co.uk UK Plone Hosting: http://plone-hosting.co.uk RPGs: Captain Senaris Vlenn, CO, USS Sarek Lt Aieron Peters, XO DS5 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
