gcmartin wrote:...technology manufacturers, vendors and OS developers operate on Industry specs...
I'd love to see Michael Dell say that with a straight face -- I've seen some mighty strange sh-- er, stuff, come out of HP, Gateway, and Compaq boxes, but I've four motherboards from Dell that are beyond redemption. These don't take the cake -- they take the whole bakery! Perhaps you would like photos of these monstrosities?
I'm afraid I must inform you that the major manufacturers are quite happy to ignore any minor nuisances such as the ATX specification and such.
It's in the name of profit, of course -- and it's a twofold operation. Make the parts cheaper to manufacture, mark the whole box down a few cents, and bring in tons more -- and when the cheap-junk parts break, the consumer can go only one place, really, so one can get away with (to a point) nigh on extortionist levels of pricing for the components!
I think what that spec (and the current, rather-sour consumer reception of Win8) actually means... is the return of the ultraportable laptop. Manufacturers won't be able to call them "ultrabooks" if they don't have exactly the right specs (at least, not if they want to avoid getting sued into oblivion), so they'll just call them "ultraportables" instead.
I'd like to think also that M$ is digging a rather massive grave for itself with Win8. I really do hope they learn a big lesson that most of us already know -- "if it ain't broke..."
...actually, I hope this is the year that many people migrate to Linux, and also the year that goes down in history as marking the beginning of the end for Microsoft and the little game they play there called Monopoly