EU issues anti-trust statement against Intel

First and foremost I wish to say that I admire both Intel and AMD as companies. Earlier today the European Commission issued a statement accusing Intel of anti-competitive behavior. This was after the result of an investigation which required months (years) of work. Intel would be wise, in my personal opinion, to fully cooperate with the European Commission and offer an out of court settlement to AMD. If Intel prefers to battle the European Commission in courts just as Microsoft has done it would simply make things worse. Microsoft prefers to use the European Courts but just how much money is being spent from the company on a protracted legal battle. Admittently Microsoft pulls in about 1 billion U.S. dollars a week so it has plenty of money, but still millions have to be spent in courts which would be better spent on investors.

http://www.europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/07/314&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Microsoft Genuine Advantage helps nab pirates

The Microsoft Genuine Advantage software helped Microsoft, federal, and international authorities nab a large counterfeit ring in China. Perhaps more importantly was the fact that retailers as well as users mailed into Microsoft the counterfeit copies of the illegal software which allowed an eventual trace to be made to the counterfeiters. I salute all of the retailers and customers which helped to nab these pirates.

Microsoft to continue OEM sales of XP in 2008

Microsoft announced in mid April of this year that they would cease sales of Windows XP to retail outlets and resellers by the end of January. That does not mean that sales to original equipment manufacturers would stop. That will continue. In fact Microsoft predicts good sales of Microsoft Windows XP through 2008. I suppose you have to stop and think about this in perspective. Is Microsoft Vista still not attractive enough to lure more customers to it, or perhaps customers are still waiting for service pack 1 to come along for Microsoft Vista? Christmas sales for PCs did not do as well as expected in December 2006 because Microsoft Vista was delayed. Microsoft really needs to plow ahead and have SP1 ready by Christmas (December) 2007 if they wish to persuade more XP users to change their operating systems and also provide customers with an incentive to upgrade. Many XP users are refusing to upgrade until the Vista SP1 is ready.

My 2 cents about DX10 prices

Here is a reply I made about DX10 pricing on one of the NVIDIA Developer Blogs:

http://blogs.nvidia.com/developers/2007/07/dx10-pc-price-p.html

***Shortly after I made these comments the developer blog in question was pulled or relocated. Perhaps NVIDIA was unhappy with the developers comments???***

I am going to point my finger at both sides of this argument. PC manufacturers need to better advertise just how good their midrange PCs are. The unknowing public believes or has been hyped to believe that to run a 3D game just as the upcoming Crysis you need a top of the line PC to show off the very best the game has to offer when pushed to the extreme. I'd love to see some framerates posted with a PC model to see what it can do with a specific game or benchmark. NVIDIA on the other hand needs to re-examine its logic with regards to videocards such as the 8800 ULTRA which is overpriced based on its performance to an overclocked 8800 GTX.

Creative Labs charges a fee for working EAX + Direct Sound 3D

I have had a lot of faith in the PC industry for a long time now. However my blood began to boil somewhat when I found out that Creative is going to charge $9.99 for their ALchemy support software in Microsoft Vista. I understand the fee from the manufacturer standpoint but it is quite lame to charge a fee for all users. Surely users who have bought their sound cards since the launch of MS Vista shouldn't have to pay!

http://www.buy.soundblaster.com/_creativelabsstore/cgi-bin/pd.cgi?frompage=category&page=product_detail&fromcategory=Software&category=Software&pid=F2222X767VHL73GYR38

EVGA starts their Scavenger hunt

EVGA has started a scavenger hunt on their website with over $50,000 worth of computer hardware. Read more about this contest on their website link shown here:

http://www.evga.com/scavenger/

Intel introduces the QX6850CPU at 3GHZ

Craig R. Barrett who is the CEO of Intel must be grinning from ear to ear today. AMD's Barcelona CPU is not yet launched and already Intel has made a quad core chip available than allows 4 cores to run at 3GHZ. No doubt Intel wants to steal some thunder before Barcelona is launched.

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20070716corp_a.htm?iid=search