Having just taken delivery of a box holding a reference system for AMD’s new Cartwheel 780G series desktop platform, Tom Yager has found a machine that brings Windows closer to a Mac user experience. Yager is referring to how on a Mac’s first connection to the Internet, all of that specific model’s latest device drivers and firmware are downloaded and installed in one hands-off operation.“Surely, if someone were given a chance to lay out the requirements for a PC standard from scratch, this sort of simplicity would be among them,” Yager writes in PCs approach Mac simplicity, courtesy of AMD. There are, of course, limitations. BIOS presents one, audio another. And while that time is not here yet, Yager writes, “I can still see a day when an AMD platform-based PC will boot from a Microsoft install disc, connect to AMD.com, automatically identify and download the latest unified drivers, and come to life as a fully optimized PC, all without the user’s intervention. That’s as it should be, and as I’ve said, I think that AMD is the only outfit that could pull this off.” Technology Industry