Intel launched its new Core i7 chip today. John Markoff's behind-the-scenes report in the Times is a good alternative to the technical-stats posts you can Google up anywhere. Intel — and several thousand miserable business reporters — want to spin Core i7 as as a sign of new hope for the tech industry's future. Truth is, there are three reasons Core i7 can't save us all:Forrester CEO George Colony listed them last week:

Intel changed its Q4 forecast from 3 percent growth to a 12 percent slump, with profitability likewise down. Forrester CEO George Colony personally blogged three reasons not to worry:

Technology beat reporters have a problem: They're required to quote experts, rather than making their own assessments of who's what is why. Armchair advice on business intelligence software flows like water out here, but readers want someone with implied credibility. Enter the analyst. Companies like Forrester or Jupiter — which Forrester just bought — create hefty reports punctuated by easy-to-grasp "magic quadrants." The one shown here ranks 14 companies by their "completeness of vision" and their "ability to execute" on business intelligence software. Since no one reads the full reports, it's important to upstart companies to get analysts to mention them to the press and add them to their magic quadrants. Gee, if only you could buy your way in. Good news: You can!

My esteemed colleague Owen Thomas worries that analyst firm Forrester Research, by buying its longtime rival JupiterResearch, has reduced the number of alternative opinions that will be floated in the media on any given topic. But by bringing Jupiter analysts including blogger favorite Michael Gartenberg aboard, Forrester will actually lessen the number of wrong opinions treated as near-fact by the mainstream media. I could spend a couple of days correlating Forrester vs. Jupiter on a spread of topics over the past decade. But screw it, I'm a journalist — two's a trend. Here are Forrester's two biggest misses I never forgot:

Analyst firms exist for two reasons: First, to dispense words posing as wisdom, for free, to journalists, as a publicity scheme to get their name out. Second, to dispense words posing as wisdom, for large sums of money, to corporations, who have read their quotes in the press. Forrester Research is acquiring JupiterResearch, which will have the salubrious effect of reducing the wear and tear on reporters' phone keypads. And instead of two wrong predictions? Only one. We hope the antitrust authorities do not block this deal.

The good news? We might still have jobs in five years. The bad news? We'll all want to kill ourselves doing them. Forrester Research reports that by 2013 enterprise spending on "social networking, mashups, and RSS" will reach $4.6 billion. That will buy a lot of one-off brews at Blue Bottle. You'll need the caffeine to prop your eyes open, though, when you get to Forrester's label for the trend: "Enterprise 2.0." Care for a definition? Since we insist you share in our crushing disappointment, you're going to get one anyway. ReadWriteWeb on what Enterprise 2.0 is and isn't: