The same is pretty much valid for our freedom of choosing the PC-systems or components that we want. You want Athlon? You get Athlon. You want Pentium 4? You get Pentium 4. You want DDR-SDRAM? You get DDR-SDRAM. You want Pentium 4 and DDR-SDRAM? - Wait a minute! That ain't possible! "Well," you could say, "it's not technologically possible! It does not impact my freedom if it doesn't work!" Here we've got one of the many examples where our freedom is taken away. We know that it bloody well is possible to run Pentium 4 and DDR-SDRAM, but the one company that has already finished the development of its technical solution for this combination prefers to keep it from you for the time being and other companies that would like to offer their own solutions are kept from doing that by the first company because of licensing issues. We, the powerless consumers, know damn well what we would like, but we ain't getting it because of political rather than sensible reasons. It's a bit similar to the status of Cuban cigars in the US. The political 'reason's are not justifiable anymore for a long time, but some people who rather care for themselves and their weird ideas than for the benefit of the majority out there are the so-called 'decision makers'. They make decisions - we suffer. Intel doesn't want to cross Pentium 4 with DDR-SDRAM, we ain't getting it. So far about our freedom.

The P4/DDR issue is only one of many examples. AMD is not free from sin either. How long did we have to wait for a thermal protection for Athlon/Duron to avoid accidental meltdown of those processors? How many of us complained about chipped Athlon and Duron silicon dies? Did AMD do anything about it? The problems were played down and nothing else happened. While we at least have some kind of idea what's next at Intel, AMD doesn't seem to know it itself. Its roadmaps are short and very generalized and often things happen that haven't got anything to do with the roadmaps we know. However, AMD doesn't have Intel's evil image. Looking at the last five years of AMD, we may want to congratulate them for today's great success, but at the same time I can spot that AMD's arrogance is growing on a daily basis as well. For me, dealing with AMD was a lot more pleasant in the days of K6. Today it's sometimes close to a nightmare. I often think that AMD would also like to make those bold and evil moves we know from Intel, but they just don't seem to be up for it. So let's please realize that AMD is certainly not our savior as well. The best and safest thing you can do in the PC-business is to buy NOTHING. Believe me, if you ain't wasting any money for PCs, nobody ain't bullshitting you either. It's the only safe way!