While this is a pretty funny article about how MSI is supposedly developing a board that is sectioned out to allow multiple interchangeable configurations, I noticed the editor made a pretty grievous mistake.
Here's the article:
And in it is this incredibly incorrect sentence:
"Introducing The One: The first motherboard platform in 19 years to give end-users the freedom they want to upgrade components as they please."
[size=20] IS THAT SO [/size]
Let me introduce you to a little company called ASRock, who actually MADE boards that allowed cross-generation upgrading.
ASRock 939 Dual-Sata2 - Socket 939 with expansion for Socket AM2. DDR and DDR2 capable, AGP and PCI-E capable, and PATA, SATAI, or SATAII capable.
ASRock K8 Combo-Z - Socket 939 and Socket 754 capable.
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ASRock 775Dual-VSTA - AGP X8 or PCI-E X16 1.1 capable, DDR and DDR2 capable, PATA and SATA capable.
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For a guy who made a comment to Socket 7, there's no real excuse to forget all of ASRock's incredibly ambitious crossover designs from 2005 and 2006. These boards actually went into production and received a few good reviews for their massive feature set, and the ability to upgrade to a new generation (at the time) with a few jumpers and a new kit of RAM.
Now obviously that sentence is more likely to point to the idea of upgrading between vendors, which rings true. However companies have built working prototype boards that bridge that gap as well, but they are complicated and unrealistically difficult to use so none have hit the market for consumers. However for the "upgrade when you please" aspect, yeah ASRock has had that covered before and it worked well.
For the people who have never seen these boards, this is only the tip of the insane iceberg that was ASRock's R&D during those years. You'll find plenty more pics from CES 2005 through 2008 of them creating incredible and outright ridiculous boards meant to bridge market gaps and give builders the option to run anything on a single platform.