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Pentium 4 Systems Recalled By Some U.S. Stores
An unnamed correspondent directs your attention to this article in the Australian PC World . It reads in part: "Consumers trying to purchase computer systems loaded with the Pentium 4 chip at Best Buy outlets in Houston; Jacksonville; Fort Wayne; and Hawthorne, were each told that Pentium 4 systems had been recalled from store shelves due to issues such as excessive heat and inadequate performance, sources said." Note: As a reader points out, the orginal headline ("Pentium 4 Recalled By Some U.S. Stores") inaccurately implied that chips rather than complete systems were being recalled.
if AMD did become the primary supplier of chips this holiday season, they need to make sure they will be able to supply all the hardware that people will want to buy, otherwise we'll have people turned off to computers in general, when they find they can't buy what they want. The personal computer is more popular today than ever before, so this will probably be an issue for all major chip companies. reading down a bit, this seems to be just with hp, so it's not as bad, but tarnishes Intel's image a bit just the same. On a more interesting note, it would be nice to see the fledgling computer users not just going straight to aol, but instead we might be able to foster some sort of creativity in them, and their responsibility to society with their new tool for productivity and leisure, so they aren't just dedicating the processor to sending Fwd: Fwd: Fwd : This is soo cute! type emails consistently. It would be nice to see an increase in websites that actually have content, and for that matter are interesting, new, and exciting. A processor is a terrible thing to waste. (Even if it is a {P4... hehe... )
-sig? who said anything about a sig?!
Intel has a pretty good marketing department behind them, I can't figure out why the hell they don't try and spend
some money educating the masses on what really pushes chip performance
because an informed consumer is a monopolist's worst enemy.
If Intel educated the masses, they'd all buy Alphas, PPCs, or SPARC machines.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"fiduciary duty" is just another way of saying: "I don't get paid to listen to my conscience."
Until people figure out that there's a difference between earning enough money for "survial" and "top of the line Lexus for my 16-year old daughter, only the best", stuff like this will just go on and on, not just in the chip industry.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Saw them perform "Tubes" several years back in NYC (just off Broadway). Great stuff, and I was close enough to the front to make full use of the poncho...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
> It does best on things like Quake and CD burning
So I can burn at 12x on my 8x burner with a P4? Whoa! [/Keanu] I gotta get one of those...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Agreed. I don't want to see AMD get too big and become another Intel, though.
That would break my heart.
I'm curious, though. Most corporations (including AMD) have nothing especially lovable about them, so what will keep AMD from getting a similar stranglehold on the PC market like Intel had? Is there anything that we as consumers can do to prevent this? It would be a shame to repeat the whole cycle again with another company. I'd like to see long term competition in the PC industry, not just companies taking turns being the top dog.
Please please please mod me up! I'm serious! Pathetic, but serious!
A few?
Of course, Slashdot isn't any different from the other news sites. "Best Buy Stores Recalling Pentium 4 Machines" is going to hurt Intel whether it's accurate or not. _If_ you read and reread the article you will learn that it's a faulty BIOS chip. The average consumer doesn't have a clue what that means and the only thing they will take away from the article is "pentium 4 recalled". Recall brings to mind images of faulty Firestone tires and other dangerously unsafe products. This is a very bad thing for Intel, even if it's HP's fault.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
BRock97... never run for public office, you_will_be crucified for a) knowing the truth, and b) speaking said truth
About 2 years ago I went to Best Buy to get a PDA. Looked around and made my decision. Stood at the counter for about 10 minutes so I could buy it, then an older couple comes up and started looking at some cameras. The salesperson comes up to help them immdediately (I was 19 at the time). I left and bought it somewhere else.
A few weeks ago my brother goes down to Best Buy to buy a Palm. People in front of him at the counter. The salesperson is telling them about the different models, blah blah blah. The salesperson lets them play with all of them. They leave. My brother steps up and starts looking at them. The salesperson actually pulls them out of his hands as he's looking at them. He asks a question, "What's the difference between these two models?" "Memory."
That's why I absolutely hate Best Buy. Next time I go I think I'm just going to waste the salesperson's time to get revenge....
So its a total recall I see... sucks to be Intel.
There are worse things. Remember Microsoft Barney for Windows?
Out of even more honesty, since, I too am a part time employee, the 9695c was the only P4 model being sold in box for the Sunday ad. The reason I bring this up is that, if there had been an equivelent system from Compaq or.... oh hell Compaq, it would have been subbed and none of this would have made the papers. Of course the CTO systems would not be affected, but since the article was about the recalled systems, I didn't bring it up. Because I am a part time employee (working Sunday only), the only correction I saw was the one from Tagwire saying that rainchecks would be issued and that the systems would be in by December 2.
right now best buy is offering an alternative configure to order system in place of the recalled hp at the same price and with free shipping.
At this point, does this make sense? Since the HP P4 systems will be in the store, non-CTO of course, by December 2, all those technophiles would be able to get their computers well before the CTO system hits their door. Guess it is a matter of making the quickest buck.
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
And on the flip side, just walking around with the car tape player I just bought m ywife I had to tell no less then 4 different sales people "NO! I DONT WANT THE WARRANTY."
Just shows how much money they make on those, I guess.
My wife is ready never to go back to Best Buy.
If I remember correctly the original 486 chips were released as SX. The difference between the SX and DX chips was the DX had a working math co-processor integrated into the die. The original SX chips were a fluke, basically the fist attempt to integrate the co-processor didn't work right and burnt out during use. Intel purposefully destroyed the integrated co-processor on the first batch because they knew it didn't work and didn't want a huge fiasco. After they fixed the bugs they continued to produce SX chips by destroying the co-processor on a DX chip and relabeling it. They found that they could still sell the SX chips even though they weren't nearly as good, just so long as the price was low enough.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
So if both the Pentium 4 and Crusoe are being pulled off shelves for defective hardware recalls, do you realize what this could mean??
Athlon will be king!!!
Disclaimer: I make no claim that this isn't already the case.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Perhaps we can use it for the boiling.
--
The most valuable commodity I know of is information. - Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, Wall Street
The Idea Box is just aching for a cage match with those damn blue guys from the Intel commercials.
The little stickers they put on the outside said "Insel Intide". (Must have been contracted out to the Slashdot Editorial Staff.)
Actually, having worked at these stores, this is pretty common. My favorite story was from when I started working there. It was back in the day of DOS 6.00. Customer comes in asking about memory upgrades, but I was too far away to hear what he wanted. The senior at the desk, after listening to the customer, pokes his head up and asks me:
"This guy has only 640K of base memory and 7,300K of upper memory. He says he needs more base memory to run X-Wing. What type of memory do we sell here so he can upgrade the base memory?"
I turned around and walked away...
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
I agree in that AMD isn't going to be any better than Intel if it continues to grow and takes over the market. I partly get the impression that Intel is failing because instead of concentrating on beating AMD, it's overly concerned with making sure none of it's own products overlap and steal thier own share. Which to me is foolish: wouldn't it be preferrable to lose a few pentium 4 sales to a DDR pentium 3 system, rather than lose them to DDR Athlon systems? Right now, Celerons are useless because they are limited to a pathetic 66Mhz FSB. Pentium 3's are limited to 512MB Ram with the i815 chipset, as well as crappy onboard video+audio. The alternative is to go rambus for no real performance gain and pay an extra 150% premium on the memory. Pentium 3's at 1133Mhz will be put on hold untill mid next year so they don't compete with the 1.4Mhz pentium 4's. It just leads to a bunch of inferior products that _will_not_ compete with each other, and _can_not_ compete with AMD.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
score: AMD 1 Intel: 0
> The P4 systems from HP were recalled because of the bad BIOS chips in them.
Damn, it's a shame someone doesn't invent a BIOS chip that could be updated without removing it from the motherboard.
Hey, wait a minute....
Pop a floppy with PicoBSD in and reboot the machine, then leave.
Bring a boot floppy with a .bmp of something rude and move it to C: and edit system.ini (or is it win.ini?) to set it as the background in windows.
Format c:
Open Regedit and delete random keys from the registry. Reboot and see what happens.
If there is a camera connected to the thing, stick up your middle finger and take a picture. It's best to be wearing sunglasses or something to make you a little difficult to identify later. Set that image as the windows background.
Go to the games aisles, find a game you want, take it to the computer section. Open the box, pop in the CD, and play the game. If an employee asks you what you are doing, pretend to be a novice computer person and tell them you found it.
It's been a while since I've done anything like this, but I have done all of them, and a few more, including moving price tags (at places like Sam's where it is easy to do since they are held on the shelves with magnets) but these are some of the easiest.
Oh, and to remain on topic...as a prank you should go to Best Buy and ask for a Pentium 4.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Still, there's the cardinal P4 caveat: Don't get one until Intel makes a DDR chipset. I'll try to convince them to give it the model number 82510QX or something.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Mattel and Intel went in on a joint venture called the "Smart Toy Lab." The main idea was to make toys that were useless without a PC. I was the main designer for the LA wing, but had to fly up to the Portland office for presenations of Intel hardware.
Some of the products of this unholy union include the Intel Me2Cam and the QX-3 PC Microscope.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
>> The P4 systems from HP were recalled because of the bad BIOS chips in them.
>Damn, it's a shame someone doesn't invent a BIOS chip that could be updated without removing it from the motherboard.
They did and that is what is happening. Comp USA is doing the BIOS upgrades and there will be a sticker on the bottom of the box indicating that the BIOS has been updated.
you suggest that intel would be better served by coming out with the P3 on a DDR platform, and you are correct. However, you have failed to remember that intel signed a deal with RAMBUS that actually forbids them from marketing a DDR chipset until 2003. it seems RAMBUS had assumed that there memory would be ubiquitous by then, but they were wrong. intel has been sweating ever since they sold their soul to RAMBUS because they thought that it would make them gobs of money. that's what's preventing intel from getting back in the game: they sold their soul to RAMBUS.
-- This sig is.
Intel has a pretty good marketing department behind them, I can't figure out why the hell they don't try and spend some money educating the masses on what really pushes chip performance.
Ahh, but if Intel did that people would know that the 1.4Ghz P4 isn't that much better 1.2Ghz Athlon despite 1.4>1.2. And they would also know that the CPU isn't the bottleneck in PC's today; it's the memory and hard drives. That certainly wouldn't help sells of the P4.
Bottom line, marketing is about telling people about your product and why they should buy it in the fastest way they can. ( well not all the time, but people do have short attention spans when listening to ads)They don't have the time to explain the subtleties of CPU performance(cache, pipelines, instruction sets, etc...)and Joe Consumer doesn't really care to hear it either. He just wants a quick an easy way to see how fast his 'puter is going to be by spurting out some large number.
And as for those blue guys...uh well I have no idea why the marketing dept thinks they'll sell P3's. They should stick with the Dust Suit guys dancing around, they're alot more hip than those blue dudes.
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
it's sort of tough to get knowledgable tech oriented employees to work for six bucks an hour in retail. just a thought. that's why it seems like every time you go to a compusa or best buy or something you end up talking to a half-bright thumb wrestler from the bayou.
not to say that the training is adequate for these poor bastards, but there _is_ a reason they're so dumb.
--saint----
Once again, Intel have been beaten to the punch by their competitors: Transmeta recalled their chip a full 24 hours ago!
Um... actually the P4 has almost four times the memory bandwidth of the P3. And as for slow hard drives... the solution to that is RAID or SCSI, depending on how much you're willing to spend.
You correctly note that clock speed isn't the only important factor in a chip. However, realize that high clock speed is a pretty good way to get good performance out of an old ISA like x86. The P4 was specifically created with high clock speeds in mind.
Ironically, the P4 does worst on "serious" applications with lots of branching, like compilers. This could be due to its long pipeline. It does best on things like Quake and CD burning, probably due to high memory bandwidth. What a strange inversion!
"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental." -Slashdot
Then we have this Rambus thing, if you think about it, Intel could have really killed Intel if Rambus' memory was as good as they said it was going to be. Intel made the mistake of having a vital part of the processor/motherboard system provided by an outside source. If Rambus would have come through, (aka smaller latency on their memory, and maybe CHEAPER) then Intel's P4 would be much, much faster since memory speed is the current speed bottleneck.
Most people didn't even bother to research this recall before taking shots at Intel, it WASN'T a HEAT ISSUE!
Lastly, Intel is much bigger than just it's desktop processor market. They have networking components, flash memory (doing really well), intel toys, server market share, low power market share (strong arm and soon p3 low power). Coming in second place to AMD in the desktop market won't kill Intel.
My harangue is over.
I once helped my girlfriend return a POS Compaq (she wanted to make all the decisions herself, so I let her...) to BestBuy. (the case literally fell apart as soon as we got it out of the box. The plastic bezel in the front sheared off entirely and, when you turned it on, the whole case shimmied like a washing machine because one of the cooling fans had already eaten its bearings. Nice, high quality workmanship there...) Hauled the cursed thing from Grand Forks all the way down to Fargo, and then waited for nearly two hours for their "technician" to ensure that it worked---basically plug it in and see if it boots. About 90 minutes into this ordeal, the tech pops his head out and asks if we'd reimaged the hard drive. My response, "No, but thank you for inserting your foot in your mouth as we're now going to file a complaint with the BBB stating that you sold us an openbox computer without marking it as such---and actually I think that fits under the definition of 'consumer fraud' in North Dakota."
:-)
The return went smoothly from then on.
FWIW, my girl ended-up buying an iMac used from a guy who does development research for Adapatec. Sweet little iMac and she's had nary a problem and loves it.
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Which Story will go away sooner:
The Presidential Fiasco
The Pentium IV Fiasco
Check it out at Ace's Hardware. The reviewer wanted to test the system with a non-T&L card, but he couldn't insert the V5 into the AGP slot! There's two notches in the standard AGP connector design, and the V5 is missing one, and it just so happens that the AGP slot on the i850 board has a notch which aligns with the missing notch. Therefore, either 3dfx is in a big bind, or V5 0w|\|3Rs everywhere will whip out a Dremel and saw the notch themselves!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
It's really a shame that Slashdot doesn't understand the different between a Pentium 4 and a Pentium 4 system. The Pentium 4 wasn't recalled, but a machine which used that part was recalled. It is a huge difference, and all of the media got this correct, except for Slashdot with it's sensational "Pentium 4 recalled" headline. Can we get this corrected please?
us Australians are notorious for reporting stuff that just isn't true and not even apologizing.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Hm. While their computer knowledge has never impressed me, I have found them to be quite reasonable when I say "just looking".
I have had to wait (seemingly) 6 hours while the dude explains the extended warranty on and HP Pavillion to the granny in front of me when all I want is for him to hand me a hard drive off the shelf behind the desk.
Fun way to torment Best Buy/Staples/CompUSA employees of the day: Go conspiciously hang out in the networking aisle, say you are looking at, say a linksys 10/100 hub versus switch, and then when he tries to explain the difference, ask "Can you tell me if this switch uses store-and-forward or cut-through switching"?
I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but the average nerd-in-training, when challenged to respond to this remark, would likely add (rather cautiously):
Maybe it's just me, but I found the abrupt nature of the parent comment fall-over funny, though it seems to have been meant seriously. On the other hand, I'm the one who hurriedly checked google to determine whether the preferred phrasing is "phasers on stun" or "phasers to stun" -- only to find that both "on" and "to" excluded from searches.
It's ok to point and laugh at me now.
And the cycle continues...
And the nice thing about /. is that you've been able to hose down the misinformation by posting here yourself :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I often wonder why people consider Intel evil. After all, Intel donates substantial numbers of PCs to academic departments around the country (and world, I think). Before AMD starting cutting into Intel's profit share, we used to get a new shipment of top-line PCs about every six months. Plus, Intel funds a lot of research, funds lots of interns, etc. To my knowledge, AMD doesn't behave in a reciprocal fashion. I know there's been no offers from them to MIT, at least.
Sure Intel's engaged in some apparently predatory business practices, but do you really think AMD won't? And how well do you think AMD will do without clearing the path in front of them?
My friend worked at Best Buy for a couple weeks before he left in disgust. It is true they are not paid by "commission". But what Best Buy isn't telling you is that for every warranty an employee sells, he/she gets an extra "bonus" at the end of the year.
Find and share links to celebrity profiles on MySpace! http://www.myspacecelebrities.com
I work at a best buy in indiana (not the fort wayne store though) and one of our HP P4's was recalled. However its my understanding that the Micron made to order P4's are still shipping on schedule and this was a problem with that particular system.
>A sales representative for Best Buy in Houston >said several Hewlett-Packard computers with the >1.4GHz Pentium 4 chip inside had been on >display, but were suddenly pulled from the >shelves because "they were running too fast."
I love how the story slips this in, and shows just how knowledgable those Best Buy employees are.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
Pentium 4 systems had been recalled from store shelves due to issues such as excessive heat and inadequate performance
Great, now if only we could recall a few elected officials for excessive stupidity.
Obligatory link: http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/11/29/ 001129hnbestbuy.xml?p=br&s=1
.. if you live on the bleeding edge, sooner or later you're going to cut yourself.
.. more performance!
.. next year, they'll be cheaper and there'll be more games available.
..
I can't be the only one who sees the P4 as a product that was rushed to market because of pressure from competitors such as AMD. The result is, quite frankly, a questionable processor. I'm in the market for a new machine, and I'll be buying a high-end Pentium III. Less money, more stability, and if we can believe what we've been told
The lesson to be learned here is simple: wait. Any machine you buy today is going to be obsolete tomorrow (figuratively), regardless of whether it's a Pentium III or 4. This being the case, a handful of clock cycles doesn't matter. Wait for the technology to mature and come down in price. This is why I'm holding off on buying a PS2
Patience. Control, control, you must learn control
Honestly, this was just meant as a joke -- sort of a typical management response to a product crisis.
As usual, it was taken way too seriously and modded down.
My personal opinion of ISO and SEI is that they are used as "corporate clubs" to get contracts -- "my SEI level is bigger than yours".
There is a lot of anecdotal evidence on the web and in various books that show both to be a lot less effective than the ISO or SEI proponents would like us to believe.
My personal opinion? Quality employees and leadership make the difference, not certification or standards.
Case in point: DirectPC has much of their s/w written in India by a level III shop. The end result, in many cases, has been horribly buggy (just look at the posts in deja.com regarding DirectPC software when the release comes out)
Why? SEI places a major focus on "on-time" delivery -- not quality. When SEI is implemented, the majority of the tracking is on engineering metrics -- "was it on time?" -- and that, in general, is how the engineer is judged.
Note that this is directly contrary to traditional engineering -- that your overriding focus should be on correctness.
SEI and ISO are, unfortunately, not what they are represented to be in the mainstream press. When a single teenage programmer can crank out a fairly robust freee software project in a matter of weeks, with no metrics, SEI, or ISO (just his personal integrity) but a full ISO/SEI shop takes several months to produce a buggy work that is not as easy to use as the teens s/w, there is something grotesquely wrong with the system and the perception of engineering in general.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Still...
I saw the BlueManGroup in Boston a couple years back, the show was called "Tubes." It's still running. (It's no 'Cats', but this isn't Broadway, either!) If you've ever had fun whonking on a piece of PVC pipe for the noise it makes, these people are for you!
- Their website is at www.blueman.com
- You can hear demos of their custom-made (or custom-used...) instruments from their site
- They've just released a CD titled "AUDIO"
- They have regular performances in New York, Boston, Chicago and Las Vegas
- There's an article that appeared on CNN recently -- with some video
- ESPN's 'extreme' site EXPN hosts some realmedia clips of them performing (I recommend the Cap'n Crunch clip, it's good for a laugh.)
- There are 3 intel PIII commercials so far... you can get them here.
That ought to satisfy a minor craving... Damn I want to go see them again! (And remember, they're like Gallagher in some ways. If you have seats in the front rows, bring plastic.)Know what? After thinking about it while writing this, I think taking on the 'Idea Box' would be right up their alley! Celebrity Death Match anyone?
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
This is the second recall on the page today, not that Intel is a suprise but the Transmeta news was kind of a let down
Maybe the OEM's are getting scared by articles like this saying things like
or maybe the products are really that bad!Well I haven't seen AMD today so I guess that makes them the winner(today).
For the Luddites of the world who resist computers, consider using computers to resist.
out of all honesty, if you are a bby employee and you read the bby computer news, you would know that only the hp 9695c (i think thats the model number) wich was shipped to stores had been pulled. hp and compaq configure to order systems were not effected by the recall, for ovbious reasons. intel had accidentally flashed an older and incompatible bios to the system. right now best buy is offering an alternative configure to order system in place of the recalled hp at the same price and with free shipping. the only known issues with the p4 were only with systems with the bad bios. still theres nothing like a ddr equipped thunderbird. ...and im only a part time best buy employee in houston. (dont pay any attention to the bad spelling)
Intel recalled the Pentium IV on November 21 2000.
You can read about it Here
Other major Intel blunders can be found Here
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
- The P4 systems from HP were recalled because of the bad BIOS chips in them.
- The P4 did not have performance issues (at least none that aren't supposed to be there), did not have heat issues, and it did not run too fast
:)
- Intel forced the issue that the retailer OR the manufacturer should switch out the BIOS chips.
- BBY opted to have HP do it.
- If the customer got their panties in an uproar, they were issued a raincheck. The systems were to be back in stock by Dec. 2.
Nothing like spreading a little FUD in aBryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
. . . and the blue man group does not even use Pentiums. They use Macs for coordinating lighting, effects, and sound for their performances.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Link
I really don't understand what is driving Intel to push out these new chips so damn fast. They are locked into a never ending pissing contest with AMD over who has the highest clocked chip. Nobody is going to win this fight, it will never end.
/.ers out there have seen software projects fail because of this?
Intel has a pretty good marketing department behind them, I can't figure out why the hell they don't try and spend some money educating the masses on what really pushes chip performance.
If they ever managed to get full scale developer buy in and good marketing behind some of their extensions to the instruction sets, like the new Pentium 4 stuff, they would really be able to put AMD into the dirt. They just have to wait and release new products when they are stable and have decent (read useful) software that takes advantage of them.
It looks to me like Intel has fallen into the maketroid trap. They are not building bad products, they are executing poorly beacuse they are stuck in a rushed development cycle. How may of you
Intel really needs an engineer back in the CEOs office, without Moore they are lost.
Hmm...
Replace heat with odor and you have the reason my last girlfriend gave for breaking up with me.
Fortunately I am a skilled dba and always have a backup solution.
--Shoeboy