That's an excellent point. I can't believe that x86 netbooks will ever be able to outperform RISC-ier ISAs, not in the near future, and NEVER on battery life.

That's an excellent point. I can't believe that x86 netbooks will ever be able to outperform RISC-ier ISAs, not in the near future, and NEVER on battery life. Since netbooks don't really need to do much vector processing or too much FP stuff in general, a RISC-ier ISA is a totally acceptable alternative. A preferable one, should applications be easily portable to it. (That's key. We don't want yet ANOTHER OS X.)