INQUIRER granularity is OK

Thank you!

Well written, sensible and brilliant -- all at the same time. However, common sense and brilliance are anathema to our lawmakers, whose pockets are lined by Hollywood.

There does appear to be a general rise in sentiment toward controlling DRM and, after reading your column, I will give a sincere "thank you" to Sony.

One other revelation from the Sony thing is the disclosure that Norton's installs rootkits too. This comes as no surprise to me as I've learned that the only way to uninstall Norton's is to reformat the hard drive.

Well, I'm rambling. I always enjoy your columns.

Ken Roberts
Newport, OR

AMD sales soar by 46 per cent

Adamson I just wanted to say great article. Well written, very funny and informative. About as much granularity (details) as I need.

Cheers,
Derek

AMD and Intel

Mr. Magee

Very good coverage from all the Inqsters on this perrennial topic. You guys are good on the tech end, as are a lot of the tech hacks. One thing I think is getting under the radar is part of the AMD strategy with dual core. It costs a good bit of cash for every cpu space on a disk of silicon that goes through production. As a manufacturing business you want to ship every possible part to your (in their case) slavering hordes of customers. With dual core you have the possibility that at least one of the two cores will turn out and you can sell that particular bit of silicon at the lower end of your produce spectrum instead of throwing it in the trash. With their demand so high this means they can essentially sell their production failures probably at least at cost. Is this not what Intel has been doing with the "celeron" lines? Those cpus are all trash from other lines right? This probably means that the AMD cpu lines that are half a dual core will continue to be sold forever, well almost forever.

best-Art Horn

More on chips

Online prices for Athlon 64 S939 have just gone up here in Canada. Yesterday, I could find an Athlon 64 3200+ (RB) for $187 CAD. Today, the same is $201 CAD.

Those that still have the Athlon 64 3000+ S939 went from $148 CAD to $169 CAD...

Name supplied

More on chips

For me the real question concerning AMD is can they make a cpu which will be good enough to break though Intel's multi-million dollar AD campagin just like they did in the server market...

Mike
http://itcritic.blogspot.com/

And more
In the article it was stated that:

"...the prices of the Opterons is rising because they want to stop enthusiasts buying them, and buy the consumer level chips instead."

I think it is possible many consumers/readers might be angry about this situation, though, I dont think they need to be. For AMD they put resources and money into developing the Athlon 64/X2 brand name, they have also spend similar (uknown if more or less) for the Opteron brand.

AMD uses the sale quantity (I think) of the processor name brand to gauge what they need to develop technologically and produce in reguards to the brands Opteron, Athlon 64, Athlon X2, and Sempron.

I believe this can justify the increase of Opteron pricing based on their given response above, since there is a viable alternative in the Athlon X2 marketing line.

Alexi S

And more
AMD is raising chip prices because people are buying too many? Why not make more Opterons and fewer X2s then? Presumably (and surprisingly) because margins on low frequency Opterons are worse than X2s.

But raising chip prices seems to me like it would be the very dumbest way out of that. Keeping the prices level should be sufficient because production costs fall.

Is it just me or does this look like the good old AMD?! Competing like crazy when they are down, but immdediately shooting themselves in the foot as soon as they are up. Let's piss off enthusiasts!

Great idea! Wow!
Name supplied

And more
OK that leaves about $350 after you facter in a backlit keyboard. That does not mention the resources and efforts Apple puts into OS X and the other software they give away with the machine. It sounds like they are NOT ripping people off. Actually not a bad deal at all.

Take Care,
Glenn