Intel's Pentium 4 Extreme Edition in price hell

DELL APPEARS to be charging through the nose for the Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition - or it will be when it starts shipping the boxes that use it.

A reader notices that if you use the Dell online site to configure two PCs identically, one with a 3.20GHz Pentium 4 and the other with a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 EE, the one with the newer chip costs a staggering $1,400 more.

Intel's list price for the Pentium 4EE is around $920 when you buy 1000 of them, but we suspect that Dell gets a considerable discount seeing as it's Chipzilla's biggest distributor.

The reader notes: "If the Pentium 4EE cost $925 in lots of 1000's, and Dell gets highly subsidised on Intel's processors, why the $1400? At most it should be $925 more and Dell would make the same margin it made on the other system".

Of course, Dell can charge what it likes and you can pay the firm as much as you want, but it might be worth considering whether the marketing buzz associated with the Extreme Edition is worth the extra $500, mightn't it?

Have you been extremeditioned? µ

See Also
Intel positions Pentium 4 Extremely Expensive edition over a dead duck
Dell unable to ship Pentium 4 Expensive Edition yet