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Just like 2004, speed increases are nice, but they will remain hard to justify for most business users, for whom "fast" was "fast enough" around 1999. And so, this year will see Intel go beyond the clock speed and concentrate on dual-core processors. Intel is planning for a brighter 2005. This means an accelerated move to Pentium M core technology, the dual-core Pentium 4s, or something else.

When Intel announced that the Pentium 4 "Prescott" core would not reach 4.0 GHz, the countdown began for the obvious 3.8 GHz release. This finally arrived in the form of the Pentium 4 570J, a 3.8 GHz processor featuring 1 MB of L2 cache. The P4 'Northwood' will fade from the market in 2005, while Intel will push the LGA775, and i925XE and i915X and the Celeron, which has been migrated to 90 nanometer.

Another thing that Intel did was to finally sign a cross-licensing agreement with nVidia, so the latter is allowed to supply its chipsets to the Intel markets as well, and its dual-PCI-Express-card SLI graphics technology to the Pentium 4 platform. Intel also announced that it will fade out the P4 Northwood this year. This year, Intel and AMD will be will be battling each other in dual-core style.

More Linux on the desktop
In 2005, several vendors released desktop environments that mimic the Windows interface, establishing Linux as a low-cost alternative to Windows. However, too much fragmentation, combined with a lack of critical desktop applications and increasing dependence on the Windows platform, will prevent desktop Linux adoption from increasing significantly.

Not just Longhorn
Microsoft will concentrate on improving XP features and lay off Longhorn hype for a while.