All your Intel case modders are belong us, you rockers

Very bad news for all you modders. The new BTX Form Factor motherboard standard which is to debut next year will obsolete your current case, and thus all your hard work. The new motherboard and thus case is a mirror image of the current ATX standard, that is the board is flipped left to right. The new Form Factor is here. This is a PDF document. See page 9 for the layout.

Also see page 5 of http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1876&p=1 article at Anandtech. Notice the Intel document in front of the case, the Intel logo is on the proper side so the photo is not reversed.

So now your case will have to be on the left side of your desk instead of the right.

Ouch!!!

Quentim D

We don't need bigger tools

With all due respect to €uromole's insightful article.

I disagree with the following comments:

"What this industry desperately needs is a new language, one that makes it easier to understand the source code and thus easier to avoid errors."

The industry needs GOOD developers; the language is ancillary. Easy-to-understand source code is something COBOL strived to attain... and some of the worst applications I've seen are written in COBOL. Application development is much more complex in 2003, and needs developers to step up to the plate to embrace it. Not make a bigger mess with bigger tools.

"The number of "unhandled exception" errors, buffer overflows and memory leaks that are found by normal users is testament to failures in logic or failures in coding, and probably failure to understand the code or to test it to discover deficiencies."

Languages like Java and C# have tried to address these issues -- at the development level, anyway.

The perfect development tool can still be abused by the imperfect developer.

Let's put the onus where it belongs: on the craftsman, not the tool.

All your hard drives are belong to Class Action

Oh yes... I can see it now: "Your Honour, I bought a PC with an 80GB drive and I can only use 72GB!!!! I thought I had an additional 8GB to put my MP3's...err... DIVX... err... PORN... err....Word documents, in!"

If I were an LA judge, I'd order the PCs be taken into custody by authorities, examined, and then maybe some lawyer could explain to the judge why the people who STARTED the class action have their PC's filled with MP3, hacked porn, ripped ebooks, ripped DVD files and the like...

Well. Fact of the matter is: they are in their right to sue the PC makers, as the HARDDRIVE makers actually label the harddrive and state their true capacity... but PC manufacturers don't...

BUT... the PC makers will always say this is understood as "raw capacity" as actual harddrive capacity varies with the file system used...

SO... courts will demand that PC manufacturers state harddrive capacity under the pre-installed OS file system...

BUT... PC makers will get away with stating raw capacity if their PCs don't come with a specific OS...

Bloody hell, don't these people have anything better to do with their time?

Next thing someone will start suing Microsoft for the fact that their software "takes up more space on their PC than listed on the box"...

What about sueing CD-ROM manufacturers for stating that 52x CD-ROM speeds aren't "real"? That it's a peak speed and that the sustainable CD-ROM speed is much less than that?

Why don't we sue the auto-industry for stating putting in speedometers that read 160 MPH when the car can only actually do 140? (and not taking into account the speed limit on the road)

Can someone come up with the 10 greatest reasons to sue someone else in the IT business? I'm sure there's a lot of cases like this one out there... !

Cheers,
Paul

There's a Difference at XeonDonalds

QUOTE : "WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE between a Xeon and a Pentium? ...the only answer we've ever been able to get is that the "Xeons" have special characteristics built into them that make them more suitable for servers than for desktops..."

Hehehe, the typical response...

The "Special" characteristics are and always will be :

(1) The completely different format despite both using the same architecture
(2) The Retail Packaging which offers so much protection, that it requires an anti-tank missile to break.
(3) The ridiculous price tag that remains high, even when the product is no longer made.
(4) The amount of attention to design Intel gives to this series of chip.
(5) The multiplier can be set downwards. Overclocking friendly! :)
(6) The unusual cooling solutions applied to it. ie : Wind Tunnel and super large heatsinks
(7) The time it takes to get to retail markets. Allows Intel to thoroughly test them and apply technologies before the Pentium gets. (eg : HT and the 3rd Level Cache)
(8) The unusual tough testing they go through. Rivals the Special Air Service training.
(9) Acts as a backup plan, if their beloved Pentium is overwhelmed by "enemy" forces.
(10) And did I mention the extremely high price?

Regards
Stmok

Intel's Microprocessor Strategy

Most interesting. They seem to show that Intel is still wedded to the bigger, faster, fancier, single-CPU desktop solutions. Well, that may be a good approach, but is also a high-risk one. Why?

The domination of the market by single-CPU performance is due more to fashion than technical requirements, and fashion can change very, very fast. Several observers think that the traditional desktop has only a few years to go, and will be replaced by laptops and small servers (used as personal systems). There is also some evidence that the latter may be heading in the blade direction, with a larger number of slower CPUs rather than 1-4 very fast ones.

If this were to happen during 2004, Intel would be left with its lines looking very old-fashioned. Sun would be laughing all the way to the bank, and AMD would cash in with customers who want x86 compatibility. Will it happen? I haven't a clue.

Think about it. If you had the choice between buying a computer with one Prescott CPU and one with four Pentium M CPUs, with all other aspects (like aggregate memory bandwidth) the same, which would you choose? And why? And what do you think the corporate buyers (who dominate the market) would do?

Intel can certainly stop that being a choice by pricing the Pentium M high enough, but that runs the risk of losing the laptop and blade server CPU market to Sun and AMD. It is going to be an interesting 18 months!

Regards,
Nick Maclaren