April 23, 2003

INTEL IS CONSISTENT AT SCREWING UP

Intel released their 3GHz 800MHz FSB processor this week only to halt shipments after they found an anomaly.  It seems that every time they release a new processor they discover their mistake after the fact.  They are shipping software patches to OEM’s who received the processors to fix the anomaly.  This time they found the problem early on before the product trickled down to you and us.  In the past the patches had to be applied by most end users.  There was no word on exactly what the anomaly was.

WHAT INTEL PRICE DROP?

Intel announced this week that it cut prices on Pentium 4 and Celeron CPU’s.  This is Intel’s answer to AMD’s price drop last week.  The affect on AMD pricing to us was immediate.  To date we have not seen any change in Intel’s pricing.  In fact the 3GHz processors have been in shortage and unavailable to us.  Most of the other prices have stayed the same and some have gone up.  This is typical for Intel.  We see this type of song and dance every year at this time.  Prices rise in anticipation of the price drop, the change is announced and it takes about 2 weeks for us to see it gradually decline in our market. 

COUNTERFEITING IS BACK

This one was unexpected.  You may remember a few years back the rash of remarked CPU’s, and counterfeit software.  The CPU problem has gone away for the most part.  The software problem will never go away.  The new thing is, believe it or not, RAM.  It doesn’t seem very cost effective but there are people out there buying cheap modules, remarking them with name brand logo’s and selling them for below market.  How they are making money at this is a mystery to me.  We haven’t seen any here yet but one of our suppliers told us that they received a batch of fake Micron modules.  Be careful what you buy.  Remember the old saying, “You get what you pay for.”

S&K