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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stak who wrote (137260)	6/12/2001 11:29:01 PM
From: tcmay	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

"Gary, I'm not implying the Intel chip is flawed at all. There's absolutely no hint of any such errata." He was no doubt making a facetious comment. "My point is that many people must make a purchase decision with their savings. Do they pay $600/year for cable-ADSL or $275 for dial up? The cost difference would pay for Intel's top line CPUs if a large number of folks went the slow modem fast CPU way. " Many people who would _like_ to have much faster connections, whether cable modems or ADSl, simply don't have the option at this time. (Me, for example.) For many of them, it makes little sense to buy a blazingly fast PC if overall throughput for many intended uses is throttled by the dial-up speed. Compression can only go so far (typically not much more than 2x), so a faster CPU is not of much use. And for most uses, the difference between an 800 MHz PIII and and a 1 GHz PIII or Athlon or a 1.4 Ghz PIV is roughly meaningless. I figure this is why a _lot_ of individual users are shrugging at the prospect of replacing their systems for a marginal improvement in speed, and why many corporations are deciding to save money by not upgrading the systems they installed in droves in 1999 in preparation for Y2K. "However judging by Intel's dropping revenue and the increased penetration of cable modem, it appears that the dollars are going to broadband (or other periphs)." People who have access to cable modems or ADSL are getting this, but I would expect those people are slightly _more_ likely to get faster CPUs than those who are still stuck with 56K or slower dial-ups. In contrast to your point, I'd expect those with slow connections are in no hurry to upgrade to the fastest CPUs. It's probably not a matter of either/or. --Tim May