If it turns out that there is some new technology that totally goes against what I believe, then I stand corrected. Just covering my ass so I don't look like a moron.

No, not in the consumer space yet. Itanium systems have a basic ROM to get things up and going, then a "program" called EFI takes over. Think of it as a mini OS that is a cross between Unix and DOS. I was playing "ADVENTURE.EFI" on one of our lab machines, it's the old text based game. And the machine had a bios like program for setting system options and such, but thats all stored in EFI flash.

I'm sure it will be dumbed down to consumer level similar to Open Firmware that has been installed on every Mac since Steve took back over. Almost no Mac user has ever gone into it, but it can be very powerful. It's the same Open Firmware that Sun uses, and aparently it's a standard.


On the Compaq note, look into the Evo lines over the Presario. Why? Better build quality, and generally better warranties. Evo's are sold as business laptops, and are what the Armadas morphed into. Not sure how the HP merger is going to affect the name, but I do know the systems themselves are staying.

As I said at the meet though, my work provided Armada M700 is being replaced with a system that can run my preferred Unix client of choice, Mac OS X.