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This isn't all down to Intel, though. Credit also needs to go to those on the periphery of the industry who've been banging the power-consumption drum for ages. The chip company VIA is one of the major champions of this, and I feel a bit of a Judas for planning to replace the C3 processor-equipped guts of my living-room media PC with a Core-based AOpen Flex ATX board. The performance of the notebook Core T2300 I used while testing this board outstrips the 3GHz Pentium 4 in my old desktop machine, and the only cooling it needs is a teeny-tiny and inaudible 40mm fan.

So I know Intel didn't start this ball rolling. It hardly even noticed the ball was moving at all until it rolled over its foot and made it yelp. But, well, sorry VIA, I'm abandoning you for now. I know it's wrong, but it feels so right.