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

To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (165968)	6/7/2002 2:25:19 PM
From: Scott Meyer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

How does windows professional run on say a 500Mhz pentium II or III? I don't know. Given that NT 4 runs fine on a dual processor 233Mhz PII machine, I'd suspect that Win 2K would do just fine too. Might need a bit more memory. I have no experience with XP. However, following your what I presume to be your point, it is unlikely to be a factor because software upgrades are also being suppressed. What is there in Office 2002 that you really need that can't be had from office 97? Compatibility with gratuitous file format changes inflicted by MS office doesn't count. Supposing you have a nice PC running NT 4 and Office 97. What would drive you to upgrade (for work)? Since nearly all corporate applications are targeted at web browsers and most new PC software works fine under NT 4, I don't see why you'd want to upgrade. Many corporations are sticking at that level (or with win 2k) and trying to step off the upgrade cycle. NT 4 doesn't support USB so that may cause people to move to Win 2K for new hardware, but I know of no such problem prodding people towards XP.

To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (165968)	6/7/2002 3:17:54 PM
From: BelowTheCrowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

I am running Windows 2000 Pro on a 400MHz machine, using Office 2000 and other applications of similar vintage. All of them run fine. Not really a noticable difference between that and two other faster machines. I've also done some evaluation of XP vs Win2K Pro, and the real-world demands don't seem to be much different. My experience is that anything running 2K Pro will run XP Pro just fine, though an increase in memory may be desirable. Fastest machine I own (for real world use) is a 500MHz twin-CPU box. Most of the speed benefit comes from the fact that it has a RAID card and three fast SCSI drives, which improves I/O performance significantly. mg

To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (165968)	6/10/2002 8:13:35 AM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 186894

Hi Duke, RE: Experiences with processor speeds I had a 500 Mhz on NT4 several years ago. It was horribly slow. I could take a snack break while it was processing (and processing and processing.) It was negatively impacting my efficiency. Awful. I think (but am not sure) an article I read (late last year) said 50% of businesses have 500 Mhz or more (?) Maybe someone else knows. At home, I have a 500 MHz. Horribly slow. It's pathetic. I need to replace it with a 2.5 GHz or faster. That, and some other changes, would make a huge difference. I have quite a few home projects for my PC currently on hold because my PC is too slow. But after that, the next speed bump is going to be my DSL line. Once I get a new 2.5GHz PC, I'll be able to do a baseline of some of the projects that are on hold, but after a certain point, I will outgrow the DSL speed pretty fast. I'm going to want at least T1 line speed. The pace of technology never is fast enough for me. I get really frustrated with it, especially when I have to deal with anything that inhibits me from doing something efficiently, or prevents me from doing something I happen to think of and want to do but can't because either the pc or line is slow. It seems I'm always wanting and waiting for something faster: The first PC I ever bought was great for about one year, then it was all downhill from there. My dialup modem was okay with this earlier PC, but only at first, then I quickly grew frustrated with dialup speed so I upgraded to DSL. Then after some time, after I found more and more uses for my PC, I got very frustrated with this PC's speed, so I upgraded to a 500MHz. I am now quite frustrated with my 500MHz. I need to upgrade it - I have a lot of projects on hold until I get something faster. But once I get a 2.5GHz or faster, then I'm going to get frustrated with the DSL speed and will need something faster. In summary, my dialup modem drove me nuts. Then the PC's lack of speed drove me nuts. Then I got a DSL line. Now my PC drives me nuts. Once that gets replaced, the slowness of the DSL line will probably drive me nuts. This circle keeps repeating itself. What's faster than DSL? There are various options, and I don't care which one, as long as it's fast enough. I'm on the other end of the PC speed spectrum of someone like GV Tucker, and always will be. At work, I'm called the Speed Queen. I'm always wanting to do stuff that pushes my PC past its limits. For me, a PC's speed is good for about a year, then it's all downhill from there. I find it very frustrating, although every time I get frustrated with my PC, I just tell myself this is a good thing for my INTC. But I'm going to hit the limits of my current DSL line soon probably with the next PC upgrade speed, so to me that means the future consumer desktop performance growth will be increasingly limited by the communication speeds. That's why I really hope Intel is trying its hardest to fix this problem. I think the server chips will balance the consumer desktop performance growth rate slowdown that's due to communication speed issues, but I think Intel needs to get going on the consumer broadband issues. You also asked about work computers. We bought a lot of PCs in 2000, mostly around 850. We also bought some in 2001 and 2002. The ones from 2000 are beginning to negatively impact productivity. Our Marcom manager takes a snack break while her machine keeps processing and processing, it's way too slow. There are several other PCs that are hitting their limits at 850. But in this unusual economy, cash is more important than labor inefficiencies. My biggest concern in this economy isn't really about the PC speeds impacting INTC, but more about how CIO's are frozen like deer in headlights. You can show a CIO more than 10Xs return on a project, have users wanting it deployed, and the CIO can agree to do it, but guess what? He's going to get interrupted by some completely unrelated emergency like his bankrupt-vendor network providers that are widespread in the industry and have nothing to do with those that are trying to get a move on it. So, when people wonder what's up about IT spending, they think it's capital equipment spending cuts, but I don't think that's really the issue, it's IT labor cuts that have gone deep (IT staff is the first to go in a downturn). Someone should really do market research on how CIO's are spending their time these days, because the issue isn't money but time, with the recent understaffing and being in the middle of all these bankrupt vendor solutions they have. It sometimes can mean that doing absolutely nothing is better than saving more money or deploying solutions requested by users. But they aren't actually doing nothing, their time is spent continuously responding to emergencies, at some firms there's not much headcount to do much more. This has convinced me that the best way to sell aggressively in such an economic condition is to shoot an arrow into a corporation whose solution is independent of IT. Under these conditions, no wonder companies are missing revenue targets. Regards, Amy J