Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery

An alert (you may call him sad, we couldn't possibly comment) reader tips us off to the non-existence of Intel CPUs in Microsoft's Windows 98 SE compatibility list. All the other major-to-middling chip companies are there, and Intel products have a whole five pages to themselves in the list, but CPUs? Nope. Check it out yourself at the SE compatibility site. If you search by CPU it'll kick up the list of companies covered, and just looking at the list prompts you to wonder what happened to Intel. So aren't Intel chips SE-compatible? As compatible as anything else, surely, so one wonders why, in that case, they're not listed. There are several possible explanations, most of them hinting heavily at the level of gang warfare that passes for negotiation in the Wintel alliance. It could, first of all, have been a mistake, but it's very difficult to conceive of Microsoft's morlocks missing a whole pile of products, particularly when they've done such an anally-retentive thorough job on the rest of them. Check the system requirements page too, and you'll see there's no direct mention of Intel. Minimum hardware requirement is a 486DX2 (remember them?) or better, and that's it. Calculated insult then? You can imagine them sniggering as they miss the Intel chips out, especially as Microsofties have relatively recently been exposed deliberately 'publishing' Java code by burying it in places on the site where nobody can find it. But we'd still need an excuse for the calculated insult. Which maybe leads us to the likeliest explanation. Obviously in order to certify something as compatible, the Micromorlocks have to have it submitted to them. If they have not had it submitted to them, then obviously they can't list it as compatible. Why then wouldn't Intel submit CPUs to Microsoft for compatibility testing? (Can't you just hear the flick-knives coming out?) As the pair of buddies are still working together on PC99 and beyond design guidelines for the industry, they've obviously got to talk to one another about Intel chips and Microsoft operating systems (albeit not enough, if recent OS prestidigitations are anything to go by), so why the needle at this level? Anyone in the know, please elucidate... ®

Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery