2:39 p.m.: CFO Andy Bryant takes over. Revenue was up 17% in "greater European region" though Asia-Pacific was slightly lower. He indicates this is normal for third quarter. Some erosion in average selling prices and reserves for mature products caused gross margin declines. Gross margins percentage is roughly 9.5 points lower than Q3 2005, mostly thanks to lower revenue, but spending is also down so everyone seems pleased. Guess layoffs are paying off.

2:45 p.m.: Time for forecasts. Gross margins of 50%, plus or minus a couple of points. Higher volume and slightly lower costs will lift gross margin, but some costs will be higher as they transition to production of 45 nanometer. The company expects revenue to be 8% higher in fourth quarter (compared to third quarter), and expect to reduce headcount to 95,000 by year end. That's down 5% from the end of 2005.

2:48 p.m.: R&D expense is sharply down in forecasts, as well as capital spending (down to $5.8 billion for the year).

2:49 p.m.: Q&A already. That's a total of 11 minutes of prepared remarks -- wow. Short. Basically they just read the release.

2:50 p.m.: David Wong, AG Edwards. Wants to know about fourth quarter gross margins. The big change as opposed to the comments already made: they won't take any reserves this year. Inventory is transitioning pretty rapidly into 65 nm product line, and WIP is very high compared to normal.

2:52 p.m.: Merrill Lynch. Question about when the company will have the "mix in performance desktops where you want it to be." Umm... that depends. And wants to know about expense run rate... can we use Q3 and Q4 and extend that out? No, management feels their expense margins still have room to improve, but they're not going to put any numbers on it.

2:55 p.m.: I missed the questioner. Inventory is a lot higher than normal, will this change? The 65 nm is the one that will win in the marketplace, so it's important to maintain all that inventory. It's higher than management would like, but they are happy to be in the place of having WIP elbow room. It's really hard to understand Andy's voice over the webcast.

2:57 p.m.: Bank of America Securities. How much benefit are you seeing from lower unit costs? And what about the underloading charge for 95 nm -- how much is that in terms of margin points? I'm learning new words -- "underloading charges," I take it, means that the company is getting rid of its old inventory of less super-duper products, and they're taking a charge related to the inventory that isn't sold through. It's going to be worth about two points on margins.

And why hasn't the Asia-Pacific market seen better growth? It's mostly because the desktops are more popular, says Paul. "The bulk of the notebooks are built there, and then shipped out across the world," he says. They're the world's suppliers, then, but they don't want any.

3:01 p.m.: Are the new products helping revenue? Well, kinda. "We'll always be in an environment where it's competitive, we'll always be in an environment where... " ahh life sucks. But maybe it will eventually improve.

Most of the business is still large client-based, and the company isn't as nimble as they'd like. But they want to get better at that in order to grow.

3:02 p.m. John Lau from Jeffries & Company. Are you seeing strong seasonal demand? Are the chips being absorbed quickly due to all the new products end users are demanding? Ahh, it's too early to know about Q4 demand. If demand is good, it will be good, says Paul (in essence), tell John that the better the demand for core 2 duo products, the better the revenue will be. Aha.

3:05 p.m.: Customers are returning to Intel, says Paul, and gaining back market share. Naturally John wants to know if this is happening, and at what extent. Paul says the reporting agencies who track that don't even report for four months after market.

3:06 p.m.: Will competitors get too aggressive on pricing, squeezing Intel? Can't tell you, says Paul. But he has a question about capacity, too, and says that the better technology and better capacity will allow them to avoid a price war on the balance.

3:09 p.m. How will Vista's demands affect Intel? Umm... they can't say. Naturally, the more their customers ask, the more they'll give.

3:13 p.m.: Ross from Deutsche Bank. How are price pressures in desktops? Was that a major part of percentage drop in margin? Well, it's oh-so-hard to say what's contributed the most, everything works together. "Is there some point when the ASP becomes more of a tail wind than a head wind?" asks Ross. Oh, it's a lovely question, but it's not answered in any substantial way by Intel.

3:16 p.m. Will you get back to record levels for microprocessors? How fast will mobile grow and server grow compared to desktop? Oh, I haven't looked at it with that granularity! says Paul. Well, how about this: with 45 nm costs starting to perk up, what will the rate of ramp be? Andy says that there will be more quantification in January, but it will continue to increase in dollars on a sequential basis through the first half of the next year.

3:19 p.m. In essence, the question and answer say this: the microarchitecture is cheaper on a per-unit percentage basis, so, as that becomes a bigger part of overall mix, as the new products are embraced, costs will go down. How much? At what rate? We can't tell you.

3:30 p.m. Sorry, I'd be typing more but all these questions and answers are the same... can you give us granularity? What will demand be? How about margins? Umm, we don't know. Costs are going down, thanks to the lower costs of the new products, but we have no idea where prices will go. So, margins and revenues are *so* *so* SO hard to project.

3:34 p.m. Hahaha. Here's a question: is performance being affected more by architecture, or more by new technologies? It's both!

That's the end. I'll listen to the playback and see if there was anything great I missed. But for now... this concludes our presentation.