Thanks, I enjoy our talks too
I do respect your point of view,...
I'm actually on something of a vacation right now but am getting snowed out (yesterday) and rained out (today) but I'm cool with it.
Anyway, I think Intel can and will bring the fight to ARM devices in due time. It does sort of make some sense for AMD to make ARM chips and X86 / X64 chips as well though. There are even rumors that Intel foundries are in talks for ARM manufacturing too,...
As oddball as it might be I'm interested in buying the ASUS Fonepad which is Android on Intel Atom:
ASUS FonePad official: 7-inch tablet with phone functionality, priced at $249 (hands-on) Hands-on It seems reasonably cheap and functional. It could serve as a nice GPS for the car (I think) and an in car phone (if I forget my phone).
I don't think the history is written just yet, Intel has a chance to pull this out of the fire.
Microsoft has money to throw at their problems but with Zune they proved that they were also willing to cut their losses and run. So who knows how hard they are willing to push Windows RT. Still, Windows RT seems like or feels like (IMO) the answer to a question a lot of people never asked.
One thing is for sure though. Intel and Microsoft's WinTel alliance was in lockstep for quite some time (AMD as well). Something happened to fracture that covenant