i love how some people are so worried about a cpu/gpu monopoly when there is a complete operating system monopoly and thats why vista blows at the moment, and i just love how nobody ever complains about that.
amd/ati ftw.
bah, Vista will eventually get optimized just like XP did. Takes time. And the operating system monopoly hasn't slowed us down the least bit, at least with concerns to PC gaming. Look where we were
only ten years ago in PC gaming.. and look where we are now... that's pretty decently fast progression for ten years. And as far as other aspects of an operating system, well, I couldn't care for much else. We've pretty much plateaued as far as how simple and intuitive today's modern operating systems are.
Thing is, if AMD dies out, and Intel decides to slow down progress, another, smaller company with more motivation but fewer resources will come in quick and kick them in the nuts with better processors, re-initiating the cycle of things. Then Intel will re-amass its massive amounts of resources, double their efforts and destroy the smaller company, then they'll go back to slowing progress down and so on..
or, Intel will continue to progress well in processor development even after AMD kick's the bucket, due to demand from military and industrial establishments (they'll need to produce better tech to do more things and better) and that stuff will eventually find itself in its own form at the consumer level.