Windows 7: Intel 'preparing' to put an end to user-replaceable CPUs

I hope Intel won't do this kind of thing to their flagship platforms such as the X series.

I still think Intel intends broadwell to be sold alongside haswell for a while, one for portables and one for preformance users.

Tablets aren't used where I work. Only desktops and notebook computers. Nor were tablets used at my previous place of employement.

I think a lot of people are missing the whole point here....The Desktop is dying...the mouse and keyboard combo of the last 30 years is dying. It's not going to happen overnight, but in 10 years time, I think it will be over.
Companies like INTEL and MS have whole teams employed as think tanks to analyze what future tech will be and it will be smaller, faster, more integrated components with user interfaces so different to what we could have imagined when we first got our hands on a mouse.

Integrating the CPU into a MOB is a perfectly sensible step - We have integrated sound and graphics now - Is the CPU such a big step?

Most people's PC's in the next 5 years won't be a traditional PC, it will simply be a Smart TV, where I can facebook, skype, watch iPlayer and a few other things....start adding a cloud OS to this (Like Chrome) and I no longer need a PC by any definition.

It can only be right for companies like Intel to have one eye on the future and start building a planning for that now.

You could say the same point with gaming and games consoles, they believe motion control is the step forward, but I haven't seen anyone who would want to play Kinect or Wii with games like GTA; how would that even work?

The desktop market will become a niche market.

use the Wii remote as the steering wheel, Like in Mario Kart Wii.

Boom.

I liked Mario Kart on the DS

I think it's just another market channel. It's not likely to affect high-end or power users like design and engineering. The Intel Atom processor has been out for three or four years and it comes in solder only configurations. I think the fastest model runs at 2Ghz and it's a single core/thread processor. It's used for low power, compact applications like tablets and such. As computers get smaller and more mobile, the need for fixed mount processors goes up. Intel is probably just supplying a need.

Just saying that those of us that actually produce stuff and/or perform tasks beyond crap like Facebook have a legitimate need for PCs and other such multi-purpose interfaces; tablets and smartphones are designed only to consume in very simple and pre-determined ways.

It's somehow Apple's fault, they're the ones who were the first to promote the 'tablet dominance' over the PC and Microsoft blindly followed them in that race by alienating the desktop, producing a touch screen OS in the process. Naturally others like Intel are following them in the nonsense Tablet race but it's only a matter of time before they realize their mistakes. The keyboard/mouse is going nowhere but it's the fault of all those companies who are trying to compete with Apple in the tablet market. Intel may at some point enter the SoC industry but I doubt that they'll ever ditch replaceable processors, at least not in this decade.