[citation][nom]irh_1974[/nom]Well, isn't that even worse?Instead of an incremental CPU upgrade for low-to-mid users......hitting people for a mobo at the same time is just rude[/citation]
I can understand what you're saying, but, at the same time, Intel isn't forcing people to buy Sandy Bridge, and because this is only a mid-range upgrade, it probably doesn't make that much sense anyway.
But, more to the point, you have a lot of complaints about a new socket, but, honestly, none of us have any idea if it's worth it or not. We don't know what compromises Intel would have lived with, if they kept the old one, so we don't know the reasons why they did it. I remember with the Tualatins, you needed a different chipset/motherboard. It made everyone pretty upset, of course. But, they lowered the voltage of GTL+ from 1.5v to 1.25v if I remember correctly, meaning it lowered power use. For the 1% of people that wanted to upgrade their CPU, this wasn't worth it. For the 99% of people who never cared about this, they saved money every day (albeit, not a lot, but when multiplied by the number of people using the CPUs, it's a lot).
So, until we know the benefits, it's not fair to say Intel made a horrible mistake by not allowing the CPUs to work with old motherboards. In any situation, when you are only aware of the cons, and not the pros, it's naturally going to seem bad.