Five Reasons Intel May Weaken Microsoft

Seeking Alpha ^ | June 20th | Joe Panettieri

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Intel and Microsoft remain the closest of partners. But a sibling rivalry is brewing. In fact, Intel's growing investments in the open source community reveal five key trends that should worry Microsoft investors over the long haul.

In its latest move, Intel Capital has invested an undisclosed sum in Centric CRM, a small open source application developer.

Of course, this isn't the first time Intel has pumped money into open source. The chip giant's venture capital team has also invested in MySQL and JBoss (now owned by Red Hat), among others.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Wow! Intel's run by a bunch of socialists too!

Looks like even if I remove all traces of any OS there's still a communist in my box. Darn.

[Publius6961]

The chain of links from this article is fascinating.
Microsoft claims 40 million copies of VISTA have been distributed, but no clue how many of those are "bundled" with new computers, and how many were sold by people consciously wanting the damned thing.

The resource hogging of VISTA and and its protected content overhead is hardly ever discussed any more, either.

What's happening?

[ikka]

Intel feels that being locked in to essentially serving only the Windows market, limits them in terms of number of chips sold.

Therefore they are helping to grow the market in a way that expands the need for their chips. BTW Centric CRM is not a bad product, though a little clunky, which is typical of many Java-based server apps.

[rlmorel]

I read a great article that was written before Vista shipped by Peter Gutmann titled: A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection

But perhaps more appropriately, it is described by Mr. Gutmann as follows: The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history

[ShadowAce]

[Still Thinking]

Well, and does “distributed” include “shipped to Dell, Gateway and other resellers because we leaned on them, and sitting on their shelves, implying nothing about actual sales to users”?

[Publius6961]

But perhaps more appropriately, it is described by Mr. Gutmann as follows: The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history

I have read those, but the "Protected Content" downside of the operating system alone is enough for me to never want to use it.

Microshaft could defuse 98% of the hostility to this new OS (and allow the benefits of new hardware) by the simple option of being able to buy the new OS stripped of the media player and Protected Content crap.

Why do you suppose they don't simply do that?

[rlmorel]

Possibly because they think that people want to be able to play copyright protected HD content on their PC under Windows?

I know it is something I would expect to be able to do on my Mac, so I imagine PC users would expect the same. I have not followed this subject that closely, since it is not a priority of mine...I own very few movies and only occasionally play them on my laptop. But it might impact me in other areas, and I should see how Apple is approaching the issue.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

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