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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.
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!
BRock97... never run for public office, you_will_be crucified for a) knowing the truth, and b) speaking said truth
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.....
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.
> 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.
Once again, Intel have been beaten to the punch by their competitors: Transmeta recalled their chip a full 24 hours ago!
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.
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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
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?
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"?
>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
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
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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.....
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