INTEL NOW HAS seven discrete price points for systems with handy guides to each level. We hope you will find as much enjoyment reading about them as we did.

The ranges go from Atoms under $249 to fire-breathing Quads over $1200. These ranges comprise the Intel-Retail-World-As-We-Know-It-Program, also known as IRWaW-ChIMP. Here you have the lineup for 2H/08.

The low end is of course the Atom range up to $249, and it is a "Simple device for web-browsing". The CPU is an Atom 230 (1.60GHz) teamed up with the smashingly adequate 945GC chipset, 512M of memory and an 80G HD. The OS choices include XP and Linux, Vista is not an option. This means the category is the one safe one offered by Intel.

Going up from there, we have $350-450 Celeron category. It can have one or two cores, and the standard bearer is an E1400 on a G31, a Gig of memory, and a 160G HD. The Broken OS is the only choice here, but you have to wonder how MS allows this, G31 does not qualify for 'premium' status. What was horse-traded this time?

Going up $100 we have the dual core category with an E2220 and 2G of memory. This is said to do much more than the last category, but we aren't really convinced that running Vista on a G31 will do much of anything for anyone.

From there we completely skip $50 of market space to get to the $600-700 range, and this opens up the world of 'high definition'. The main way they do this is to offer the G45 as an option, but G43 will more likely rule the SKUs. Coupled with the E7300 CPU (2.66/1066/3M), it should do OK in providing the user with a black screen courtesy of Vista DRM. In HD.

A little up from there, we again lose some money to the black hole of marketing and land in the $800-1000 group. This is the first one that any enthusiast will care about because it couples an E8400 (3.0/1333/6M) to a G45 or P45 chipset. Go for the P45 with a discrete card, trust us here. They claim that this with 2G of RAM and a 500G HD will set you back under four digits, so who are we to question it?

If you are hell bent on spending those four digits, the next big leap for mankind gets you to a Q9400 (2.66/1333/6M), but otherwise it is the same. Most of that $200 will be eaten up by the $103 difference in CPU costs, but given that you get "Outstanding quad-core performance for visually intense gaming and media creation", how can you say no? Sell the kids if you must, but get one of these.

If you have more than one kid to sell, the greater than $1200 category is the one for you. It has no integrated GPU option at all and a Q9550 (2.83/1333/12M) on an X48. Intel recommends 3G of RAM and a 640G HD for some reason, enthusiast numbers all around. In any case, if $1201 buys you one of these, well, you could do a lot worse for a gaming box.

In general, Intel's 2H/08 breakdown makes a lot of sense, covering most of the bases. It is sad that the only time they mention Linux is the lowest end, you could whack $100 and a lot of malware off the top of every category without Vista. When the time comes for a new box, at least you will know what the Intel options are now. µ