Thank you GE. That was the argument I was looking for. and I hope you read the part of my post that referred to an economic attack. You have hit the nail on the head. This is the threat we will surely deal with in this arrangement. I am glad you have put the real nuts on the table to be cracked. I think any help to the ChiComms is an attack on us, one that the ChiComms plan on taking full advantage of. But, remember that IBM's PC division, outside of their Thinkpad brand, is stagnant and has been for some time. HP has made their own bed and regardless of this deal must lie in it. The deal with the ChiComms may hamper HP, but they aren't going to go silently. You must remember that much of IBM's PC business is in the the industies of governement and defense. Those entities are not going to buy a product that is owned by the ChiComms. I would hope. I may be wrong, but I could only hope.
You're welcome, no one knows that point any more than I, not only have I previously recommended IBM products be purchased by my customers, I have a significant personal investment in their products myself. I feel totally betrayed by their recent actions, and repulsed by the comments of Palmisano above.
However I'm also repulsed by IBM turning their back on genuine Unix and porting Unix features to the foreign clone Linux, the result being countless foreign fakes that now steal US software sales, and propel the most powerful computers in communist dictatorships. The Chinese take Red Hat Linux, and rename it "Red Flag", all supposedly legal, and for free, and to the delight of those in China and other parts of the world. Without the state of the art contributions of US corporations led by IBM, China would have very little interest in Linux.