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Remarked Celerons Sold As P4s
Lam1969 writes "Sumner Lemon reports that a Chinese company, Shenzhen Chuanghui Electronics Co., is remarking Celeron chips as Pentium 4s and supplying software to mask the chips' real pedigree from operating systems. From the article : 'The remarked processors Chuanghui sells are actually 1.7-GHz Celeron chips and are currently available for $78 each, including a motherboard, in quantities of 100 or more, said James Zhan, a company representative named online as a contact for potential buyers. By comparison, Intel sells the real thing for $401 in 1,000-unit quantities without a motherboard, according to the company's most recent price list.'"
Zhan defended Chuanghui's sale of remarked chips, saying the company makes no attempt to hide what was done to the chips
I wonder why they're offering the masking software then ?
On another note, how do they plan to mask it on non-Windows OSs.
> Zhan defended Chuanghui's sale of remarked chips, saying the company makes no attempt to hide what was done to the chips or to pass them off as more valuable processors. "I tell them the truth," he said.
> But Zhan acknowledged that Chuanghui has no control over how its customers represent the remarked chips when they resell them.
Maybe I can help him out with an argument there. Obviously, the "remarked" Celerons are more expensive, since he is selling the service of remarking. The chip itself is not changed: it is still as dead slow as it always was. Charging a premium price is obviously only possible if you trick your customer, which of course means selling the "remarked" Celeron as a P4. So by setting the pricing structure of the product he makes sure that the product can only be resold using fraud.
Claiming ignorance is not going to help there, it remains a big scam. Remember the empty cache ICs in 486 boards? This is no different.
The article says that the software hides the identity of the chip from BIOS. It also says that the chip has the cache disabled. Is the cache present and disabled? Does that mean the software also enables the cache? That would be too cool.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"I'd probably buy one of those combos at 70US$ regardless of their fraudulent business practises, though."
Then you are also part of the problem.
Consumers supporting known businesses which have no ethic drive the good businesses with ethics out of business. Why don't you just see what hardware Microsoft has to offer you for your evangelical services?
I thought that all current Celerons were Socket 478, and that all new P4's were LGA775?
Surely this will only work until someone with half a clue actually opens their case, won't it? What good is a sticker when a the chips, the mountings, and the heat-sink bracket are different between the celeron and p4?
The "lots of 100" is the worrier---it means they'll most likely go to dishonest resellers and system builders only too happy to hide the missing $322 in markup.
This is not my sandwich.
What's the big deal? There have always been and always will be liars, cheats, and thieves among humans.
Yours is one of the most idiotic and mind-numbingly baffling class of comments one can find on Slashdot (and that's saying something!).
Putting aside the fact that you clearly have no understanding of what constitutes news, the fact that you don't find fraud to be a "big deal" is revolting. If you bought a PC from Dell (for example) that was fraudulently mislabeled like the ones in this story, would you just shrug it off and say, "big deal"? Or would you be pissed? Really pissed, and demand not only a refund (or at least, hardware that matches what you paid for), but also look into possible legal actions you might take, as well as, say, thinking it worthwhile to inform others about the fraud?
Not only is this news, but it's also worth alerting others to as well. If fraud is routinely shrugged off as normal and not reported on, there will be less reason to *not* engage in fraud.
No, this is collusion.
They cannot argue there is any legitemate reason to do this. Just because they are providing someone else with the tools to rip you off doesn't make them any less complicit in the act.
This is an example of "Free Trade" and "Free Markets" in action!
No, this is exactly not an example of free trade. Fraud is not a component of free trade. A market economy depends on the customer's ability to actually get what's purchased. Scam artists like the Chinese company in question are parasitically abusing a free market's expectation of consistency and reliability in a brand (Intel, in this case), and the only people who call such BS examples of a free market are those who don't want a free market.
it sure shows one of the limitations of outsourcing to the cheapest source
No, this is not the cheapest source. It's a person lying about being the cheapest source. That doesn't show the limitation of bidding out your purchases, it shows the problems inherent in dealing with "businesses" in a country that, at the highest levels, encourages rampant copyright/brand scams.
You get what you pay for!
No, you get what's delivered to you. If what's delivered is fake, then you did not get what you paid for. In most western countries, one of the things we do pay for is a law enforcement framework that doesn't much put up with the fraudulent sales of such items. Since that's not being paid for in China, people doing business there frequently get exactly what's not being paid for.
I wonder who will be checking the authenticity of those upcoming Olympic medals?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Goofy analogy. No, when someone sells you a computer, they don't know that you'll use it to pirate music, or commit identity theft, or whatever - maybe you will, maybe you won't, and they don't have any control over it regardless. When these guys sell a thousand of their chips to some computer manufacturer, they know goddamn well that the buyer is going to use these things to rip people off - that's the only possible reason someone would buy these things, to rip people off.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Erm.
They may be properly speed-graded, but what about the cache?
Or are you saying these are Celerons that just happen to have 512K L2 cache?