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That is whistling past the graveyard. There is no commercial alternative to Microsoft. The alternative is Linux. The first Fritz chips will be optional. Intel is not THAT stupid. Unless and until there is a legislated mandate that all PC hardware be Fritz-chipped, people will reject it. And if it should ever become mandatory, watch the bootleg market for mobos with it. Imagine turning PC smuggling into a multi-billion dollar busienss! (Maybe this is what the Drug Warriors are hoping for as their next gravy train.)

These days you can run Linux and Open Office on a washing machine's microcontroller. There will never be a shortage on non-Fritzed hardware. (Gee, this could put the phrase "on the Fritz" back in style.)

And if it should ever become mandatory, watch the bootleg market for mobos with it. Imagine turning PC smuggling into a multi-billion dollar busienss!

You're kidding yourself. When it comes to people getting high, they're willing to do just about anything. But crack open a case and work on a motherboard? Get real. It's a hobbyists' niche.

... until there is a legislated mandate that all PC hardware be Fritz-chipped, people will reject it. And if it should ever become mandatory, watch the bootleg market...

Doesn't matter. Consumer electronics makers all over the world build primarily for the US market. When the new required equipment specs get codified and US Customs starts blocking imports, everything else will become obsolete, and no one will build the old stuff anymore. What you got is what you got, and that will eventually give out or otherwise be replaced.

There hasn't been a UHF general-coverage receiver or scanner produced anywhere for at least 10 years that will receive between 820 and 890 MHz. (the old US analog cellular band)... which is off-limits forever, on radios sold everywhere. Very few of the old radios are still around, and people have been prosecuted for using them. The law that mandated that was the Communications Act of 1986.

It won't take long...