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Intel Recalls New Chipset-Based Motherboards
VD writes "Intel Corp., world's largest chip maker, has made a serious mistake, which led the chip giant to recall its recently launched 925 and 915 chipset based motherboards. Intel reported the problem to be with the ICH6 and requested that motherboard makers recall their motherboards from the channel. The chip maker has agreed to pay compensation to motherboard makers for the losses." There's also a Reuters story as well.
Well, Rueter's made it sound like no big deal, but I think its a bit of a confidence killer. Looks how issues with a small subset of a product seem to taint it for life: overheating/crushable AMDs, P4s need super-expensive RAM, GeFroceFXs require a leafblower, etc. Release bugs seem to follow computer parts in spirit well after the flaw is corrected.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
In general, a mistake by one competitor does not give me more trust in another. Less trust in the former, yes.
The customer is going to pay for Intel's mistake, in many ways. They will have to foot the bill for it, and they will be without computers for a while, unless they have their old systems. How many of you keep old systems lying around? I've got a backup system on hand, but it certainly hurts to have to use it!
Customers will think twice before being early adopters for Intel, and that is when prices go up.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
We all know that Intel puts all their equipment through a strong Quality Assurance check. They run tests on computer equipment that others in manufacturing envy.
Do we really accept that these motherboards had a bug? Or was Intel trying to paper launch the motherboards using hardware that was still being worked upon?
Mistakes like these do not happen due to QA or engineering. They happen due to the upper levels of the company pressing a product and tossing a coin in the air that it may work properly long enough to buy them time to get the engineering down.
Intel needs to restructure their company. Their products and arrogance of the past few years has led them to market the entire computer industry out of some really good products.
AMD does not have the capacity to supply the World the chips and does not have the cash to buy fabs off of Intel. With Intel tripping and unable to keep up with AMD, all innovation in the CPU industry is put on hold until the market demands updates in speeds.
Remember Intel claimed this:
10 GHz CPUs on the P4 Architecture.
Socket Technology was at its maximum speed. The Slot was the only way to advance CPU technology.
AGP was needed due to the PCI bus not being able to continue advancements.
We do not need 64-bit desktops yet.
Perfect Voice to Voice language translation.
I am done listening to Intel trip up. Intel = AMD in 1997 at the moment. Maybe for their employees sake, they will get things put together before we find an accounting error trying to sustain a broken company for enough time to fix product issues.
You buy new shit, consider yourself a beta tester. Waiting a few months to let others find these problems has always seemed smart to me, and I really don't feel like I lose anything.
Oh no... it's the future.
It's ironic in that if Intel was a software (only) company, this probably wouldn't make a headline. If they were a software company, the customer would probably end up paying for the fix. You have to wonder what it would be like if software was developed and tested with the same rigor as hardware. Instead, software is often pushed out the door, chock full of bugs, and it's the customer who ultimately pays the price. Of course I'm generalizing, I understand there's plenty of quality software out there, but much more poor quality software. The obvious explanation is that software is of lesser quality because it can be; it can be patched, and with great efficiency these days via auto updates, whereas hardware doesn't afford the same benefit.
What this demonstrates is soundness of strategy given that they find themselves in this pickle (of their own making) to start with. They've avoided the even bigger mistake of staying silent, and the redress they're offering to mobo manufacturers is likely to minimize the damage to their relationships with these parties.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Do you want the head of
- The engineer who made the original mistake
- The document writer who may have caused it
- The manager who failed to do enough checking
- The QA people for missing it
and so it goes on.
Kudos to Intel for simply saying "We screwed up" and recalling products. They seem to have learned much from the old Pentium FPU errata handling.
CPU's don't make noise - fans do and Intel CPU's produce more heat then AMD's so you need a higher capacity cooler while using an Intel CPU. If your setup is noisy that's because the fans used on it are noisy and you can always replace them.