Intel's test: buy the PC, then pay for more speed

[Celebration]

http://www.physorg.com/news204305952.html

What if you bought a house and were told there's a secret rooftop deck you'll have to pay extra to access? If you're shopping for a personal computer this holiday season, you might get that kind of proposition from an unlikely source: Intel Corp., the world's biggest maker of personal computer processors.

Intel is including Pentium chips that are better than advertised in some low-end desktop computers. But to unlock their full power, buyers will need to a pay an extra fee.

The company says the program will enable people who have bought inexpensive PCs to upgrade them cheaply, through the Internet.

It's only a test so far, with the goal of gathering feedback.

News of the test has slipped onto technology blogs, and has rankled some hardcore techies because it asks people to pay extra for things the chips are already capable of doing.

[hobbit709]

1. Wonder how long before the crack comes out.

In my personal experience, I've found AMD processors to much more reliable-and a lot easier to overclock.

[struggle4progress]

2. This is almost as good as the copiers sold about 15 years back

that printed too fast for the manufacturer's market strategy: so the manufacturer added another step to the process to damage the chips selectively and sold the slower copies in bulk at a reasonable price but sold the undamaged (easier and cheaper to manufacture) fast copiers for 5x the price

It's about as good as the Coke vending machines (from the same greedy era) that contained a thermometer and adjusted the asking price depending on how hot is was

[struggle4progress]

3. Intel's upgradable processor: good sense or utter catastrophe?

By Peter Bright | Last updated September 22, 2010 12:01 PM

... The Pentium G6951 is a low-end processor. Dual core, 2.8GHz, 3 MB cache ... Buy an unlock code for around $50 ... and your processor will get two new features: hyperthreading will be enabled, and another 1 MB of cache will be unlocked, giving the chip a specification just short of Intel's lowest Core i3-branded processor, the 2.93 GHz Core i3-530 ... The processors will ship as part of a pilot program next quarter to a select number of resellers in ... US, Canada, the Netherlands, and Spain ... OEMs will receive kickbacks for any systems that get upgraded in this way through a revenue-sharing system ... http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2010/09/intels-upgradable-processor-good-sense-or-utter-catastrophe.ars

don't much agree with the editorial slant there, but the piece has some useful info

[Occulus]

4. This will not end well for Intel.

The crack will be widely available within weeks, perhaps even days.

I'm assuming the procedure utilizes some sort of automated, foolproof flash of the BIOS. Hell, cracking the thing could be argued to be perfectly legal, as Intel isn't selling software here, but a repair to an intentionally defective product.

Didn't the FCC (or another agency) recently find that jailbreaking iDevices doesn't violate the DMCA? Seems to me that would apply here as well...