Dell inching closer to AMD

In the same week the Apple became Intel's best friend and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison gave strokes to Sun over Dell (at least for that day), Dell CEO Kevin Rollins made a comment that seems to suggest that his company is now "open" to selling AMD-based systems. Dell likes to keep its supply chain as simple as possible (and is Dell's largest customer), but the combination of AMD's well regarded technology and having a better negotiating position must be changing the company's thinking.  Still, I'm not betting that Intel will let Dell defect from its camp without making an extraordinary effort to keep its number one buyer happy, including having CEO Paul Otellini come on stage at a Dell event in a clean-room bunny suit, as he did for Steve Jobs at Macworld.