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Flaw, Erratum, Defect... (5/10/00)
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Hey, how many Pentiums does it take to screw in a light bulb? If you said "2.000001," bzzzzzzt, sorry, that's the old answer-- what do you think this is, 1994? No, jokes change with the times, and the new answer is, "I don't know, because my Intel motherboard keeps crashing before I can even generate a math error." At least, that's how thousands of PC owners may be feeling right now after finding out that a "chip defect" on several Intel motherboards can lead to intermittent and seemingly inexplicable freeze-ups. (And you thought it was just Windows.) Faithful viewer Zach Leber kindly pointed out a Reuters article describing the problem-- and Intel's attempts to avoid a PR debacle of "Pentium Flaw" proportions.
First of all, it's worth noting that this motherboard problem isn't as widespread as 1994's Pentium "erratum." In fact, the number of affected motherboards is "less than a million," which ought to make anyone feel better, right? And this time around, Intel isn't trying to hide the flaw; the company is accepting full responsibility and has offered to replace all affected motherboards for free. Reportedly there's a utility available on Intel's web site that lets customers check to see if their motherboards are flaky, but its location wasn't immediately obvious to us. (If we actually had a PC, we'd probably look a little harder.)
The cost to Intel for fixing this problem is unknown, but apparently it could run into the "several hundred million dollars" area-- which explains why the company's stock tanked almost eleven points on Wednesday. Still, it's nice to see that Intel learned its lesson about owning up to mistakes instead of trying to cover them up. Ideally they'd have also learned a lesson about not shipping defective equipment in the first place, but heck, everyone makes misteaks.
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 5/10/00 episode: May 10, 2000: Wave buh-bye to the prospects of getting a dual-processor G4 next week-- if AppleInsider's right, that is. Meanwhile, Microsoft asks the judge to throw out the government's breakup proposal, and Intel admits that a slew of motherboards out there have a flaw that makes them crash-prone...
Other scenes from that episode: 2284: The Likelihood Dwindles (5/10/00) And the gestalt backpedalling continues! We won't know if it's a Pismo-No-Show-induced dose of overcaution or an unfortunate true reflection of unfolding events until next week, but now AppleInsider has gone from "WWDC May Finally Yield Multiprocessor Power Macs" to "WWDC May Not Bring Surprises."... 2285: Slap Our Wrists-- Please (5/10/00) In "Redmond Justice" news, we're pleased to see that Microsoft's penchant for melodrama is holding strong through Sweeps Month. The company met its deadline and filed an official response to the government's corporate breakup proposal, and those of us hoping for lots of over-the-top whining and barefaced protestations of innocence weren't disappointed...
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