The lawsuit will probably be on the trailing edge...

I don't have any special insight on this - just stuff I pick up on Fudzilla and the like. I think the FTC probably has an open-and-shut case against Intel, but I assume it'll probably be settled. Unfortunately, it's in its very early stages.

http://www.fudzilla....nt/view/16926/35/
http://www.nytimes.c.../17chip.html?_r=1

Of course, there are rumors that Intel may buy nVidia, so who knows.

It seems obvious to me that the netbook/laptop market would evolve very quickly if Intel and MS weren't putting restrictions on what could be used. Every netbook shouldn't have a 160GB max hard drive, or a max 2GB RAM or be without an optical drive or ... There's clearly a restraint of trade issue going on. It shouldn't be legal - whether it is, I guess a court will have to decide.

Whether the FTC or Apple or ARM-based boxes or smartphones or Ubuntu or whatever causes Intel and MS to reduce the restrictions first, I can't say. But I think them trying to "protect" the $1000+ laptop market is ultimately a losing strategy.

Cheers,
Scott.

...always try not making $1000+ laptops be "not shit".

My work laptop is a Latitude D630; C2D 2.5GHz, 4GB RAM, full wireless doodads. With Vista Business and docking station, it will have run well into $1500, not counting the software that's on it.

And the admittedly solid magnesium chassis aside, it's a bit cack, to be honest.

The screen has a frankly pathetic viewing angle, it's only got one speaker, the ports are distributed around the machine seemingly at random, it's got a bizarre wireless on-off switch that kindasorta controls the Bluetooth and the Wifi, the keyboard feels like it's made from the cheapest plastic ever, and so on and so on. Sure, it's plenty quick, and the graphics (Nvidia Quadro summat-or-other) give Aero a decent amount of pep, but as a package?

Less pleasant to have on your lap and actually use than my wife's aging MacBook (1.83GHz C2D, 1.5GB RAM, El Crappio Grafico), and with much worse battery life to boot.

I can reel of a list of similar but different gripes about the fancy-pants shiny gold Vaio my sister bought a while back. Superficially nice, not-at-all-superficially expensive, but the build quality just isn't there.

So, yeah.

Make expensive laptops look and feel expensive, would be a good start.

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