I worked at VMware when Pat first became the CEO. Pat is very much an engineer. If you ever wanted an engineer as your CEO, then that's Pat. That comes with some goods and some not-so-greats. Pat isn't very inspiring, at least not when he first became CEO. But I always got the feeling that he genuinely love engineers and is more comfortable around them than anything else. I once hosted a fun little engineering challenge (building bridges out of spaghetti). It wasn't a fancy event -- just a bunch of engineers having fun. Pat actually agreed to come by to hand out the awards at the end. I left VMware partly because I've been there so long and partly because I wasn't excited about it anymore. I felt its best days were behind it. Well, Pat proved me wrong by a wide margin. If no-nonsense engineering is what you need to win, then Pat is the right person for the job. It's a good day for Intel I think.