Itanium and Microsoft were both missing from IDF

THERE WERE TWO things about IDF that didn't hit me until the plane ride home a few days after it was all done and dusted. And they are potentially more significant than what was shown: It was what was not shown, in this case Itanium and Microsoft.

First off, Itanium. It has been relegated to the niche of high availability, maybe Poulson will change this, maybe it won't, but until then, times are going to be tough. This was clearly (not) stated in the keynotes, I attended five of the six, and the word Itanium was not mentioned once.

The only time it escaped the lips of an Intel exec was when Montvale was mentioned in relation to a Hitachi server. Tukwila can't come soon enough, but will it be enough? Will it top a an eight-core Beckton? Place your bets, people.

The other more interesting one is Microsoft, and by all appearances, it is not doing well in Satan Clara. Intel finally woke up to the most obvious thing since DRM killed VIIV, Micorosft OSes are killing anything that is not a desktop PC.

The howls of laughter that greeted Origami were only topped by the wetted pants of people who realised that Vistagami was not indeed a sick joke. Intel bravely did the stiff upper lip thing for far too long and pretended it was a good thing, not just a viable thing, until Spring IDF. Then they said the magic words, Linux.

Six months or so later, Microsoft is about as welcome on the new Intel platforms as post-coital bumps on one's genitalia. There was no pretense that MS has a viable entry in this segment, and for once, the devices looked interesting. Heck, I will go so far as to say some of them were downright nifty.

You could tell the Windows based ones, they were the clunky bricks that the booth staff visibly winced at (pun intended) when you asked about battery life. What was a radical idea at the last IDF is now a tide moving inexorably through the sub-notebook space. Intel opened the doors and put an umbrella out to shield people. Flowers are now growing underneath.

Both of these things are a radical change from past IDFs. What were topics accompanied by strained smiles and oddly concocted scenarios are now simply gone. In their places are ideas that are the right thing for the right reason. It looks like this mindset started with the core CPUs (again, pun intended) and worked it's way to the periphery of Intel's business. How refreshing. µ