Well said, if perhaps a bit hopeful. This may be the spark that begins the first real race within' consumer markets, between ARM and x86. ARM has historically been 5 years behind on raw horse power, but with the Cortex-A9, they're going to be competing for MHz with the Atom, and AMD has no cards on the table. I'd love to see what happens to the note/subnote market, with a 1.5GHz ARM CPU in direct competition. Something like this, but rivaling the Atom for speed? http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/touchbook/ Hey, maybe this will trigger Microsoft to release some of this "Surface" "technology" "they" have developed, to the real world? har har.

I see a lot of pannick and swearing about all this DRM/TC issue, but thus far, no action.
Has no one picked up on the fact that all the major telecomms are signing agreements with TC group to require DRM sigs from all incoming connctions? How many Sigs are going to be granted to *NIX platforms? How likely is it that "THE INTERNET" will run under the Windows platform for more than 10 minutes :)?
I have no qualms with the DRM hardware. I think its stupid, but then, I think most things are stupid. What bothers me is that TC group is trying to take over the internet. Microsoft tried to proprietarize http years ago. They nearly succeeded.
An all DRM internet would be a terrible thing.

As for the hardware issue, I don't think we need to worry.
There are plenty of manufacturers developing outside the MS enforced standards. I.E. When Microsoft suggested to ATI that they don't provide linux native drivers, ATI submitted. When approached with the same suggestion, Nvidia essencially told MS, "you don't grow up, we won't support Vista".

Someone else made one very simple point earlier that I think was probably the most important. We'll see hardware with a "DRM Free" stickers.
With any luck, Nvidia will be sticking those to everything they throw out their doors.

I'd suggest a boycott, but they're only ever fully backed by the good folk wearing thought screen hats.