"In the future we believe we'll conduct business in a way to encourage consumer choice .. and agree to it?"

So what on earth has changed a twenty year old strategy that has made manufacturing expertise push-back IT technological innovation? The end result so far has been only to create monopoly profits while denying competition the possibility of taking root to improve things.

With the FTC having made a cash payment of $1.25B to AMD, one could imagine that the IT monopoly is a thing of the past. On the other hand, others might see this as only a down payment on AMD's lost profits since 2000, that being the only year it was able to announce profits of $1.25B before taxes.  Although a step in the right direction it's hardly a treble penalty as was being demanded under AMD's complaint. And here's the agreement between AMD and Intel which we found posted on AMD's website.

Still, we can only hope that the PC industry will soon become a competitive business once more where consumer choice is not solely determined by advertising budget but rather by user benefits instead. Nevertheless we checked in a couple of our local stores in Quebec City and see there's a big difference in performance between comparatively priced Windows 7 laptops if we are to believe the Windows performance index scores on each. The best performing machines score 5.9 and 5.7 respectively for machines with ATI's 4650 512 MB graphics in each and AMD and Intel processors respectively (that's right the AMD CPU powered machine runs faster - contrary to popular opinion).

Then a machine with ATI 4200 graphics scored 4.5 and three machines with Intel CPUs and and Intel R4 graphics scored 3.4 each on the Windows index. It looks pretty clear to us even on laptops where AMD is just starting to take on Intel, they are already way ahead. We also saw a MSI CR6000 machine with NVIDIA 8200M G graphics that didn't even have a score on the Windows index. We assume it's a lower score than even the Intel graphics powered machines?

Here's the significance of the Windows performance experience index which we found here. As you'll see the AMD machine mentioned above would have scored the highest score in the index to date.

The latest news on the competitive front in 2010 shows that things haven't really changed much yet.

The Federal Trade Commission still seems to be a  little worried (FTC) "that Intel's compiler deliberately cripples performance for non-Intel processors such as those made by AMD and VIA".

The only bright light on the horizon is AMD and ATIC's co-founded Global Foundries to favour fabless start-ups and existing fabless innovators to extend their market gains at the expense of the monopolists in whatever form they take.

The restructuring of Spansion, the former AMD, Fujitsu joint-venture seems to be proceeding well for the emergence of an asset-light entity with far lower overheads than previously. The successful resolution of the restructuring (in our opinion) seems to be centered around ensuring that the debtors in possession can manoeuver so as to exit this exercise while maintaining a fully qualified ISO certification and thus preserve the firm's value (for creditors and perhaps even investors) and at the same time satisfy the Wall Street financial partners involved.