Re:Yes, Intel thinks users will remain dumb foreve (Score 1)

I agree with you in saying that the x86 based processors may not be as efficient as more advanced RISC based processors (Alpha, Sun, etc.), however you also need a BIG piece of reality into you. The fact of the matter is that a Sun Workstation worth less than $5000.00 will have a much lower performance than a high quality PC which would cost only $3000.00. In our research group we have a Sun Ultra Enterprise Server with a 333Mhz processor and a PII 350Mhz processor beats our processor on many integer and floating point calculation benchmarks. The first one costs $20000.0 while the second one much less than $5000.00. We also have many Sun Ultra 10 Workstations (they cost around $5000.00) with 333Mhz chips and their performance is inferior (in Matlab applications) to simlilarly configured PCs. The reality is that if you don't have around $50000.00 to buy the TOP of the line Sun or Alpha, you can get MUCH MORE PERFORMANCE from a PC based on the Athlon or Pentium processor for much less money. Personally I think you are much better off using a PC with Linux and the latest top of the line processor (wether it is the Thunderbird or the Athlon) than bying a very expensive Sun machine. On a different subject I find it very funny that even INTEL itself admits that PC133 SDRAM is better than RDRAM. This is not new since it's been in may websites like toms hardware guide (www.tomshardware.com). I guess we will have to see what are INTELs true intentions with respect to memory in the future.