Opinion: What is going wrong with Intel's marketing?
Second-guessing decisions made by large technology corporations is a perilous task. Including a copy-and-paste function in a new smartphone operating system, for instance, might seem like a no-brainer, but Microsoft decided against doing just that for the launch build of Windows Phone 7. Whether that turns out to be the correct call isn't the point. What matters is that making sense of such decisions from an outside perspective is often a fool's errand. You simply don't have all the facts.
Problem is, I'm finding it impossible to ignore a pattern of apparently antagonistic anti-customer decisions coming from Intel of late.
The best example is Intel's experimentation with 'upgradeable' CPUs. I'm not talking about replacing an old CPU with a new one. I'm talking about the ability to unlock hidden features. Currently, this 'service' is limited to a select number of low-end Pentium dual-core processors based on Intel's Clarkdale processor die.
Courtesy of a code acquired when purchasing a $50 upgrade card, the chips gain HyperThreading ability and an extra 1MB of cache memory. The details of how this works aren't terribly important, but involve BIOS support from certain system builders' motherboards.
Moreover, it's not unusual to have hidden or locked features inside CPUs.There are good reasons for doing this in terms of market segmentation and production yields.
New approach
However, Intel's approach is new in the sense that it's an unashamed moneymaking ruse. It's effectively gazumping the customer by saying, "Hey, you know that CPU you bought from us last month? Well, it turns out we didn't tell you about all its features. We'll happily unlock some extra performance for you, but only if you're willing to push another $50 our way. Deal?"
Of course, AMD has unofficially dabbled in this area. Some of its multi-core processors have hidden cores that can be unlocked. The difference is that no money changes hands and no promises are made.
You can buy a triple-core Phenom processor and have a crack at unlocking the fourth core. If it's a dud, you're out of luck and your PC won't boot, but you've still got a chip that works as advertised in triple-core mode.
By contrast, there's something much more insidious about Intel flogging chips with the intention of later upselling hidden features. As an owner, I know that having paid once for the damned CPU, I shouldn't have to fork out again to have it turn on properly.
End to overclocking?
On a similar note in terms of contempt for its customers, I was very disappointed to learn that the upcoming Sandy Bridge generation of Intel PC processors will perhaps spell the end of mainstream overclocking. Intel has tweaked the architecture toeffectively integrate the speed of every bus.
Push the base clock up, and the USB, PCI-E, CPU uncore – you name it – all goes up. Reportedly, the effect of all this is to limit baseclock increases to a paltry two to three per cent.
The real kicker here is that Intel realises there's a market for overclockable CPUs and will serve it with K Series chips. These offer unlocked CPU multipliers and therefore the ability to adjust coreclockspeed without any knock-on effects.
Exactly how much Intel will charge for K Series chips isn't clear. But going by existing Westmere-based K Series models, they won't be cheap. Anyway, it seems clear that enthusiasts on a tight budget will no longer be able to buy a low-clocked version of Intel's most powerful desktop chips and clock the twangers off it.
Frankly, I'm baffled that Intel thinks this is a good idea. If the number of such overclocking enthusiasts is small, it hardly seems worth cutting them out of the market. However, if there are lots of them, denying them affordable access to suitable CPUs will only push them in the direction of Intel's main rival, AMD.
Rounding out the evidence for Intel's anti-customer attitude is its famously brain-dead branding strategy. As I've bemoaned on many occasions, with the Core i3, i5 and i7 monikers, it's now almost impossible for ordinary PC buyers to have any real idea what CPU they're actually buying. The whole sorry situation strikes me as being intentionally obfuscatory.
It's all the more disappointing given that Intel's CPU engineers are currently on such blazing form, but I suppose it all plays to the pessimist in me.
Intel's recent performance has been near-flawless. Something's got to give, and if the engineers won't deliver, then it's down to the marketing guys to screw it up. From where I'm standing, they've really got their eyes on the prize.
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Review: Roccat Kone [+]
The first Roccat Kone mouse we checked out was way back in October last year, and now it's back and better than ever. The design of the Roccat Kone [+] is essentially the same as the original Kone, all sweeping curves and ergonomics a go-go, but it's the innards that have had a good, old-fashioned tweaking.
The vanilla Kone comes in with a standard dpi limit of 3,200, whereas the Kone [+] weighs in with a hefty 6,000dpi maximum, putting it on par in response to the top-of-the-line mice such as the R.A.T. 7 or the Razer Mamba.
Profiles enable you to configure up to five different dpi settings within that rather extensive range. The secret to the other major addition to the Kone lies in the name, and in the impressive bundled suit of software.
The [+] in the title refers to the EasyShift [+] button offered by the mouse's drivers. Essentially it acts exactly the same as the shift button on your keyboard, offering secondary functions for each of the programmable buttons on the device. It's easily set up in the quality software interface, and by default comes configured to look after some Windows functions such as audio volume and muting.
The Roccat driver suite also comes with the same TCU surface calibration the original Kone came with, and is still just as nifty.
The Kone [+] is a worthy update and well worth a look. The only issue is that the R.A.T. 7 – by far my preferred option – is only £4 more now.
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The PC rare metals crisis
Your PC contains an arcane concoction of materials that are rare, hazardous and dangerous to manufacture, but what would happen if those ingredients were to run out?That doomsday scenario was raised twice last November, when New Scientist reported that supplies of indium tin oxide – a material used in the manufacture of touchscreens – are likely to run out by 2020.
Meanwhile, The New York Times sparked an investigation into American/Chinese trade relations when it claimed that China was planning to cut exports of rare earth elements – used in many technological applications – by almost a third.
Indium tin oxide (ITO) is used to coat LCD panels for touchscreens. A by-product of lead and zinc mining, it is conductive and transparent, but expensive to produce. The US Geological Survey, on whose work the New Scientist report was based, estimates worldwide reserves of indium to be around 16,000 tons, or 10 years' supply.
The Indium Corporation, however, claims that there are reserves of 50,000 tons, and the current demand is just 500 tons a year. According to the corporation, the report into ITO supplies doesn't take into account the fact that 75-80 per cent of ITO used in the production of a touchscreen doesn't stay on the glass, but is recycled back into the manufacturing process.
"People usually don't realise the impact of recycled material, and confuse the total demand with the net demand," said Emily Giasone, metals manager at Indium Corporation. "There is a big quantity coming back in the loop that should be taken into consideration."
Rare earth elements
Rare earth elements (REEs) are also very costly to refine, although not as hard to come by as their name suggests. REEs include metals such as neodynium, dysprosium and terbium, which are commonly used in various components, including LED backlights, magnets for speakers, hard drives and DVD drives.
The vast majority of REEs – some 97 per cent – currently come from China, where production is much cheaper than in other territories with REE reserves, including Russia, South Africa and the US.
The Chinese government was quick to deny the allegation that it was planning to restrict REE exports.
However, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) warned that the current supply chain is unsustainable.
"The world demand for [REEs] is higher than the current production rate," said Charlotte Beard, Physical Sciences Program Manager at the RSC. "And with new developments being made in the electronics market this demand is only due to increase further."
Demand is estimated at some 134,000 tons per year, while only 124,000 tons are produced annually.
While the future of PCs may not be in imminent danger, these stories throw into sharp relief how little most people know about the manufacturing process of computer parts, and how profligate we are in the use of rare or hazardous materials.
Over 60 elements are used in IT production processes, including mercury, cadmium, beryllium, lead, bromine, gold, platinum, lithium and more.
The use of such materials also presents problems when PCs reach the end of their lives, although environmental activist group Greenpeace says a lot has changed since it published its first Green Guide to Electronics in 2006 – the same year the EU's Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive came into force.
"When we launched the campaign, there were no BFR- [bromine flame retardant] and PVC-free products on the market," said Renee Blanchard, Greenpeace's Toxics Campaigner. "Today, many of the companies we rank have at least one product that is almost completely free of these hazardous substances."
Dangerous waste
"The area where the industry is weakest is in taking responsibility for [its] own e-waste," Blanchard continued. According to a recent report, 'Tackling High-Tech Trash', by the New York-based research and advocacy group Demos, the US generates around three million tonnes of electronic waste a year, of which less than 14 per cent is recycled.
Another report, by Computer Aid, says that even in the EU with its tough WEEE regulations, only a third of e-waste is accounted for.
Yet the problems of obtaining raw materials and safely disposing of old products could be overcome if more e-waste was recycled.
As the Demos report points out: "More gold could be extracted from a metric ton of used circuit boards than could be extracted from 17 metric tons of gold ore".
Many experts believe that standardised, modular product design from which more essential materials can be recycled is not an impossible goal for the IT industry, if it chooses to rise to the challenge. There's a long way to go.
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Review: SteelSeries Shift
The Zboard, the Shift's precursor, was massively flawed. Unfortunately though, SteelSeries seems to believe the Zboard's problems all stem from the execution of the design, not the actual layout itself, and have released the Shift. Some of the key problems have been addressed. Before, the action of the keys felt like each letter was laid out on the back of a bloated corpse. That's been changed a little now, with shorter travel distance on the keys to give it a more responsive feel.
Unfortunately, though, there is still something of the dead about the action. Trying to use the Shift as a standard keyboard is a definite no-no.
Some keyboards, even the specific gaming keyboards, can be a joy to type on, with firm, reassuring actions, but there's something rather spongy about the Shift.
SteelSeries has also added hotspots to the board layout. This means it takes more pressure to operate certain keys than others. The WSAD keys, for example, take 60g of force to get a reaction while Shift and the space bar take 70g. That 10g difference is very noticeable, particularly if you're typing. Trying to get a capital letter or question mark in a sentence might well require you to change the way you type.
True, this is an MMO-specific keyboard, designed for MMO gamers to be able to purchase different board layouts for their game, or change every single key on the board to do something different. But then what I said about the Zboard remains true here.
The keyboard has remained the interface of choice on the PC, mainly because of its versatility. You can play the latest shooters, then in a trice switch to your messenger client and chat to a friend, then put the finishing touches to the screen play that's bound to get picked up and make you millions in Hollywood. All without changing input devices.
The Shift, though, is asking you to alter that, asking you to have specific keyboard layouts for whatever it is you're doing at any one time. If all you do is play MMOs and never use your keyboard for anything else then maybe this is the board for you. Maybe…
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Wikipedia celebrates 10th birthday
Wikipedia has turned 10, with the online encyclopaedia becoming one of the most used and useful knowledge bases on the planet, and aiming to hit one billion users a month by 2015.Wikipedia is now being read by 400 million people every month, accessing the 17 million articles in 270 languages on everything from Aardvarks to Z Tables (a mathematical table for the values of Φ).
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, recalled: "It's hard to imagine that it's been 10 years since I first edited Wikipedia. I remember that first day.
Edit
"I clicked on 'Edit' and I wrote 'Hello World', and that was the beginning of Wikipedia and all the things that have come since then," he added. "I want to thank everyone who has helped.
"I want to thank all the people who have edited Wikipedia, who have contributed to this great knowledge base.
"I want to thank everybody who is reading Wikipedia, who is really engaging with ideas and knowledge. That's what we made it for: we made it for you to read."
The first articles included 'Astonomer' offering the sentence "Scientist whose area of Research is Astronomy." And 'Sweden' : "Country in Northern Europe. Inhabitants are called Swedes. Language spoken is Swedish. Capital is Stockholm."
From acorns… Happy birthday, Wikipedia.
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