Intel pricing in 2008 will reflect a major/drastic change in consumer preferences.

The change being "The crossover from the desktop to the notebook

Intel pricing in 2008 will also reflect the switch in manufacturing technologies from 65nm to 45nm completely,yes they have long started to switched over to 45nm but the pace has increased drastically with their Israel fab ready to go into full production.

Out goes those 65nms parts in inventory clearance - implications being future price cuts.

Target being "the introduction of Nehalems initially on 45nm then later on 32nm technologies".

So a combination of factors mentioned above, namely consumer preferences & technologies will bring in further price cuts in 2008.

In addition, the other possible reasons could be- market corrections,inventory reductions,boost slugish sales

Dealer feedbacks & OEM responses are taken into consideration to prevent inventory pile ups,discontiuation of products that are slower movers in the market,inventory clearance,etc etc.

The 45nm productions is rapidly replacing the 65nm ones for greater profit margins.

Also this link for the Intel price list.

http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/10/101302/April_20_08_pricelist.pdf

CRYSTAL CLEAR.

There is actually a model number consistency of some sort - the E7xxx series is to the E8xxx series what the E4xxx series was to the E6xxx series. The two sets are just a way to differentiate Merom from Penryn. E5xxx would make more sense. Xeons ended up with the E3xxx and E5xxx names so those would be out, but there are also E7xxx Xeons so it's all a big mess. F that.

I do think it's dumb that they kept using E there if they were going to do this.