Ok, one of the things that I have wondered is if we can have our cake and 
eat it too. In particular with respect to the Wintel Hegemony.

Consider that Wintel has produced some defacto interfaces that get good 
volumes and keep prices low (EIDE, PCI, SDRAM, video monitors, mice, and 
keyboards) Could we design a system around these things and make it 
credible? Should we? I imagine neat things one might do with a custom 
computer but the overhead of supporting it would be INTENSE! Compilers, 
applications, OS, drivers, alone would kill me.

--Chuck