Intel plays Russian roulette

CHIP FIRM Intel has announced a new plan to study Russians - no, not in some kind of covert warfare, but in a bid to understand how they use technology in anthropologically different ways from us bods in the west.

Chipzilla is swiftly cottoning onto the fact that whilst the world might be connected by the internet, there is plenty different about the way we use it when it comes to the local climate. The goal, it seems, is to take existing products and given them a suitable local tweak for the Russian market to make them into better sellers.

"We are focused on how people around the world use technologies at home. Engineers often have an inappropriate understanding of technologies," Francoise Bourdonnec, head honcho of the Domestic Designs and Technologies Research Group at Intel, said. The ethnographic study will attempt to understand more about how Russians use their tech.

The St. Petersburg Times has an article discussing some of Intel's existing ethnographic work, such as introducing parental locks for home PCs in China and creating dust-proof PCs for use in India.

Given the climate in Russia, could we suggest that perhaps some machines might come pre-overclocked? µ