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.

Comments

Re:Best Buy Employees

[BRock97]

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.

Re:I'm starting to notice a cycle here

[Drakantus]

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.

Intel off the pace again...

[Ronin441]

Once again, Intel have been beaten to the punch by their competitors: Transmeta recalled their chip a full 24 hours ago!

Re:Best Buy Employees

[HerrNewton]

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.

----

Re:Best Buy Employees

[norton_I]

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"?

Best Buy Employees

[Drakantus]

>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.

The *TRUTH* About The Recall

[BRock97]

Working at one of the stores, the real deal is as follows:

• 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 a /. article....

Bryan R.