Compaq, Intel not in anti-AMD conspiracy

WE'VE RECEIVED QUITE A FEW emails from readers about the Hardware Roundup yesterday. This one is particularly interesting because it shows how Compaq segments its market for business and for home, and also underlines that AMD still needs to do plenty to become a serious player in the corporate sector.

However, Van Smith's Web site reports further on the matter today. µ

People,

There is a good reason why you can't buy XP/2000 Pro on an Athlon based machine, and it is not bias toward AMD, although that might be there also. Most large manufacturers have the machines they sell split into two categories, home and business. This split is much more pronounced than software packages and colored case inserts. Although the specs may be the same on both machines, they are very different.

I will focus mostly on laptop, mainly because that is what the debate here is about.

Compaq has several lines of laptops for home use, the 7k and 8k lines being mentioned quite a lot. These are bright, rounded, flashy machines, usually with big speaker grills, and lots of things to make a shopper go 'neat'. The hinges are cheap enough to be scary, the plastic is bendy, and you can flex the screen enough to distort the picture with precious little effort. The components are sub par, speced on price.

Every time I pick one of these up I cringe. Batteries don't last long, and the whole machine isn't long for the world if it is used as a real laptop should be.

The other category is business laptops such as the M700. Just picking one up, you can feel how much more substantial it is. Normally in a computer, feel does not equate to much, but in a laptop, it generally means added durability. All the cheapness of feel is gone. If you spec out an 7xxx machine identically to a M700 class machine, the M700 will cost more, much more.

The added price goes into intangibles like structure, stronger and lighter components, and better batteries.

They also have more interchangable parts (universal bays for batteries/CD/DVD/floppy) and more corporate features like TV out (presentation) and wake on LAN. Overall, it is really worth it for the more expensive business class machines, they live longer.

Back to the story, we get to AMD and XP Pro/2000. AMD isn't in any business class machines, home or desktop. I won't belabour the reasons why, but suffice it to say it is partly chicken and egg, partly AMD's marketing.

Either way, no major manufacturer yet makes business/workstation/server class machines with anything AMD in them.

The next thing, is what does XP pro offer you over XP home? From now on I will forget about 2000, although much of what I say applies to it - Dual CPU support, and remote support features. What does it lack?

Multimedia fluff, more MSN tie-ins, and help for the truly moronic. The only real thing it buys you is dual CPU support. How many home class machine have dual CPU options? A quick count reveals none. How many home users need remote support from their datacenter/helpdesk? Probably about none. Basically, the features offered by XP Pro are wasted on a home machine. If I were a manufacturer, I would not waste the time and effort validating and supporting the OS on those configurations, it would never pay for itself.

Since no Athlons are available in the business class of machines, there are no Athlon machines that 'need' the XP Pro OS. For this reason, I rather doubt that it is overt Intel stron-arming, rather they strong armed AMD out of the business class of machines where the XP Pro OS lives, and the manufacturers just do what comes naturally.

If you want to point a finger, point it at the manufacturers for not offering a business class Athlon machine -- that is where the dirty stuff is going on. Who wouldn't want an Athlon in a solid case with all the features?

I personally laugh at people who buy Brios or Presarios, they do get what they pay for. Don't blame the PC makers for doing the obvious, in this case, it really is the right thing to do.

CD

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