Once we had figured out what Intel was up to, it did not take very long for us to put two and two together. Slide number 14 on the HP presentation of IA-64 technology clearly demonstrates that if you've got 32 bit applications, they're not going to run much faster. It's a hardware kludge. So Intel has a definite agendum and it wants all those 32-bit applications to be ported to the Merced/McKinley platforms. McKinley will be twice as fast at 1500MHz and it's a mountain, funded by HP, gig time. We apologise to those clever readers that had noticed this already. Never mind the mountaineers rescued from Mt McKinley last week. Being this kind of hack is almost impossible for old geezers like most of us are here... That's why, after all, Intel set up the IA-64 fund, and is keen to get developers to port their apps. But it's not a simple thing to port apps, and, after all, Merced has slipped. Surely Intel should pay people to kludge up their 32-bit apps. And as the take on Merced now seems to be that it will start at a 750MHz clock speed, why should software developers do their thing for the much faster .13 micron Willamette thing? I think we and the rest of the world should be told. ®