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Intel Hardware

Remarked Celerons Sold As P4s 273

Posted by Zonk from the interesting-marketing dept.
Lam1969 writes "Sumner Lemon reports that a Chinese company, Shenzhen Chuanghui Electronics Co., is remarking Celeron chips as Pentium 4s and supplying software to mask the chips' real pedigree from operating systems. From the article : 'The remarked processors Chuanghui sells are actually 1.7-GHz Celeron chips and are currently available for $78 each, including a motherboard, in quantities of 100 or more, said James Zhan, a company representative named online as a contact for potential buyers. By comparison, Intel sells the real thing for $401 in 1,000-unit quantities without a motherboard, according to the company's most recent price list.'"
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Remarked Celerons Sold As P4s

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  • Bizarre quote... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    By comparison, Intel sells the real thing for $401 in 1,000-unit quantities without a motherboard, according to the company's most recent price list.

    Er yes.. but of course the difference is you're actually getting a genuine Intel chip running at 3.4GHz.. and not a chip with a sticker on it that says its a 3.4GHz when in fact its only a 1.7GHz!

  • Great stuff! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by c0l0 ( 826165 )
    I wonder whether they're supplying users with custom patches to the Linux-kernel as well to cover their processors' real innermost :>
    If they actually include a motherboard with a halfway decent chipset, I'd probably buy one of those combos at 70US$ regardless of their fraudulent business practises, though.

    • Re:Great stuff! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zemplar ( 764598 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:16AM (#14080765) Journal
      "I'd probably buy one of those combos at 70US$ regardless of their fraudulent business practises, though."

      Then you are also part of the problem.

      Consumers supporting known businesses which have no ethic drive the good businesses with ethics out of business. Why don't you just see what hardware Microsoft has to offer you for your evangelical services?
      • Hardware from Microsoft? You want him to buy an Xbox?

        More seriously, there is actually a way past a lot of this. The fraudulent vendor may have replaced the BIOS on the motherboards, to lie about the specs of the hardware to the display screens and in turn to the operating system. Some interesting hacks are available that way to set the system clocks to one speed, and lie about it to the OS. Alternatively, they've simply replaced the bits of Windows that display the processor characteristics.

        To get past the

      • Re:Great stuff! (Score:4, Funny)

        by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:16AM (#14081266) Homepage Journal
        Why don't you just see what hardware Microsoft has to offer you for your evangelical services?

        IBM dual 2.0GHz Xeon workstation w/ HW SCSI RAID 0/1/5 for sale

        Is that a link to an example, or just an unfortunate coincidence?

      • I notice you are using an IBM system. Why buy from an unethical [wsws.org] company?
        • I was using the IBM...since sold - sig corrected.

          What you describe is the unethical use of business technology, not the unethical business.
    • ...That's great until you find out you actually bought a remarked P3 350 mhz. Actually, you bought a hundred. Given their admitted business practices, is that so much of a stretch?

    • Re:Great stuff! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by VStrider ( 787148 )
      Nope. The scam targets windows boxes since most (if not all) PCs come with windows preinstalled. As soon as you install linux, their scam will be expossed.

      And even if they did provide kernel patches for linux preinstalled PCs, it wouldn't work. The scam would show on your next kernel update.

      This targets only windows users. The ones who never install another OS or have never removed their cpu from the m/b.
      • Actually to complete the package you need to buy it with an pre-installed counterfeit version of Windows and bundle of Office and Photoshop for only $75 more.

    • Silly Asians (Score:4, Funny)

      by carguy84 ( 897052 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @09:28AM (#14081034)
      Next thing you know the Chinese are going to be making knock-off designer labels and cheap knock off electronics...oh wait.

    • Re:Great stuff! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by CaptainAx ( 606247 )
      The problem is after all the tariffs from importing the combo back to US, it'll end up costing more than it would if you bought the real 3.6 locally...

  • No attempt to hide ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by amodm ( 876842 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:06AM (#14080726)
    Zhan defended Chuanghui's sale of remarked chips, saying the company makes no attempt to hide what was done to the chips

    I wonder why they're offering the masking software then ?

    On another note, how do they plan to mask it on non-Windows OSs.
    • There not hiding it, because they sell to PC builders (per 1000 CPUs). The PC builders will then use the software to defraud their constumers. As if the net profit by using pirated Windows wasn't enough.
      • Yeah but the chips have fake badges on them. It's not like they are going to sell you a pc and say, 'well this chip is a celeron that looks like a p4' the only point of doing this is for fraud
        • It seems that they are doing exactly that, in the hope of getting business from PC makers who want to cheat their customers.
          I wonder how long they will get away with this. In most western countries, I think they could be indicted for some form of "aiding and abetting" of criminal activities.

    • Re:No attempt to hide ? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by slavemowgli ( 585321 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:15AM (#14080758) Homepage
      There's a difference between hiding the true nature of the chip to the buyer and to the computer they're using. The former is not acceptable, but the latter is (if the buyer is aware of what they're actually buying).

    • Re:No attempt to hide ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Justus ( 18814 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:19AM (#14080778)

      They're offering the masking software because some unscrupulous OEM (the sort who sells people pre-built computers with $7 power supplies so they know they'll be back in the shop soon) will buy these rebranded Celerons and sell them to consumers as the real deal.

      I'd imagine that they don't really worry about masking it on non-Windows OSes, since the proportion of users that buys a machine from a vendor like this and puts Linux or something on it is likely rather small. The people buying from this sort of vendor aren't techies, or even really mass market; techies would be buying parts individually (and hopefully from a reputable vendor) or, like the majority of consumers, buying from Dell or HP or whichever big OEM is offering the best deal at the time.

      This is an annoying, amoral practice, but it's not really any different from scams in any other industry. The solution is, as always, to buy from people you know and trust and avoid Comps'R'Us, no matter how sweet the deal seems.

      • Re:No attempt to hide ? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by amodm ( 876842 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:30AM (#14080813)
        Your point is well taken. However, this does not take away the fact that they are facilitating a crime.

        In fact, in 99% of the cases, this would be meant only for these unscrupulous OEMs (1% to take the theoretical possiblity of someone trying to fool their friends that he's got a high end machine)

        IANAL but facilitating a crime (very obviously here), is itself a crime in most of the countries, AFAIK.

        I'm surprised at their audacity to openly claim all this, and to top it all, justify it. Lets not confuse audacity with honesty here. They are not honest guys and should be taken to task for this.

        • Re:No attempt to hide ? (Score:5, Funny)

          by thparker ( 717240 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:22AM (#14081293) Homepage
          IANAL but facilitating a crime (very obviously here), is itself a crime in most of the countries, AFAIK.

          Is anything a crime in China? I mean, apart from free speech?

          • Is anything a crime in China? I mean, apart from free speech?

            I believe paying american artists and producers of music and movies for rights is against the law? Near as I can tell they only allow one copy into the country for ripping purposes. I say we get our revenge by only allowing them to buy copies of current releases. The miserable quality of current films will have them crying uncle in no time and we can finally get fair distribution laws. We could get really nasty and only allow remakes and sequel

    • or how do they hide it for the bios...do they have their own bios for every motherboard brand they sell?

    • Re:No attempt to hide ? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by macklin01 ( 760841 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:16AM (#14081262) Homepage

      On another note, how do they plan to mask it on non-Windows OSs.

      I saw this in the article:

      "Chuanghui handles the remarking of the Celeron chips itself, Zhan said. In addition, the company provides buyers with software that masks the identify of the remarked Celerons from a computer's BIOS and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP operating system, fooling the software into believing the chip is actually a 3.6-GHz Pentium 4 processor, he said."

      So, this explains why they're selling it with the motherboard, as it's a major component of the scam: they're masking the chip's speed at the BIOS level, probably with some sort of hack to the mobo's BIOS. The interesting thing, then is that any CPUID program would probably misdetect the chip, regardless of the OS. But put the chip into another motherboard, and you'd probably detect the correct chip type.

      At least, that was my impression. -- Paul

  • Hypocrite (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thsths ( 31372 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:13AM (#14080748)
    > Zhan defended Chuanghui's sale of remarked chips, saying the company makes no attempt to hide what was done to the chips or to pass them off as more valuable processors. "I tell them the truth," he said.
    > But Zhan acknowledged that Chuanghui has no control over how its customers represent the remarked chips when they resell them.

    Maybe I can help him out with an argument there. Obviously, the "remarked" Celerons are more expensive, since he is selling the service of remarking. The chip itself is not changed: it is still as dead slow as it always was. Charging a premium price is obviously only possible if you trick your customer, which of course means selling the "remarked" Celeron as a P4. So by setting the pricing structure of the product he makes sure that the product can only be resold using fraud.

    Claiming ignorance is not going to help there, it remains a big scam. Remember the empty cache ICs in 486 boards? This is no different.
  • Can the fakes be told from the real thing?
    • Yeah, they are bloody slow!
    • This is a *HUGE* problem in the electronics industry. My company bought some Samsung memory chips to use in our products... They turned out to be counterfit, and failed like crazy. A run of 1000 pcb's was ruined, and Somehow 4 units escaped into the field (did I mention these things can destroy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment if they fail?). The ram chips were samsung, but they had been remarked -- they were 20 years old!

      And lets not forget the motherboard counterfit capactior thing

    • Not easily, since a Celeron is basically a faulty P4 with no cache.
    • Smash it open and count the transistors

      1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - ... - 2,367,194,217 - 2,367,194,218. Whew!br />
      2,367,194,218? Wait a second, this is an AMD chip!

  • more details anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by superwiz ( 655733 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:14AM (#14080753) Journal
    The article says that the software hides the identity of the chip from BIOS. It also says that the chip has the cache disabled. Is the cache present and disabled? Does that mean the software also enables the cache? That would be too cool.

    • Re:more details anyone? (Score:5, Informative)

      by amodm ( 876842 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:25AM (#14080800)
      This may not be your answer, but most of the times, a part of the chip is disabled for a reason.

      A lot of people think that manufacturers just enable/disable functionality and sell them as premium/standard offerings. This is a wrong thought.

      Caches take a decent amount of silicon. Very often the silicon yeild is not good, in which case caches are not 100% reliable, which is why they are instead marked as disabled, and the chip sold at a lower rate.

      Even if you manage to enable these caches, they may not work for you reliably.
      • But I suspect more than 60% of Celerons are fully functionnal P4s that were lobotomized to avoid flooding the market with high-end parts that would kill ASPs. If we look at AMD that does market-specific core respins, we know yields are good enough to make area-optimized all-or-nothing cores more desirable than one-size-fits-all lobotomizable designs when production capacity is somewhat limited.

  • But isn't it a completely different socket? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by afaik_ianal ( 918433 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:19AM (#14080780)
    I thought that all current Celerons were Socket 478, and that all new P4's were LGA775?

    Surely this will only work until someone with half a clue actually opens their case, won't it? What good is a sticker when a the chips, the mountings, and the heat-sink bracket are different between the celeron and p4?

    • Re:But isn't it a completely different socket? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by indytx ( 825419 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:46AM (#14080856)
      Surely this will only work until someone with half a clue actually opens their case, won't it? What good is a sticker when a the chips, the mountings, and the heat-sink bracket are different between the celeron and p4?

      How many people really have "half a clue?" First, go out on the street and randomly ask people about current events, a few historical figures, a couple of science questions, and geography. Almost too many news programs to count have found that most people are pretty ignorant of the world around them and history. You'll get the same result. Next, ask them what's the difference between a Socket 478 and an LGA775. How long would it take until someone on the street can answer this?

      • Re:But isn't it a completely different socket? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @09:13AM (#14080974)
        Next, ask them what's the difference between a Socket 478 and an LGA775. How long would it take until someone on the street can answer this?

        In fact, I wouldn't be able to answer this question right now, and I'm a programmer/sysadmin who sets up several servers per year. We simply have hardware people, and I get a ready box where my intervention doesn't exceed attaching a disk.

        Of course, the last time I built a computer myself, a P2-era Celeron 300A oc/ed to 375, I researched such issues. But nowadays, I simply don't have time to deal with the hardware -- other people are paid to do that. I wouldn't notice the scam in the article unless I happen to glance at the messages during a system boot or notice the discrepancy while resolving some driver problem (non-Windows), or somehow notice that the system is way slower than it should be.

        So... if an experienced person who just doesn't deal with hardware wouldn't spot this scam on the first glance, how would a layman get it?
    • I Have been programming for the past 5 years. I have rarely opened the case up to see what is inside. If I do it is to replace a hard drive or put in a new network card. I spent very little time looking at the CPU and figure out oh that was a celerion vs a P4, or an AMD, when I open the Box I know where the stuff is. But when I open a Box and see a Celeron vs a P4 it would probably pass by me unless I was actually checking for such and then Ill just good the information and see how a Socket 478 Looks diffe
      • I Have been programming for the past 5 years. I have rarely opened the case up to see what is inside.

        I have been programming for the past 30 years. I always opened the case up to see what is inside, even with mainframes. You are missing the beauty of technology solution and emotional feeling of touching the real hardware. How could you tune your software up to maximum out of possible without knowing your chips?

    • Not only would most people not know the difference, but while the fastest P4s are on the new socket, you can still buy a retail 3.4G P4 for the 478 Scoket for $280.00 on Newegg. Even a 2.4 P4 on the 478 is going for $116.00. Even if people knew the diffrence between sockets, there are real P4s for that socket available.

  • scams 'r' us (Score:5, Insightful)

    by theonetruekeebler ( 60888 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:19AM (#14080781) Homepage Journal
    This is a classic example of "If it sounds too good to be true, it's probably not true." If you think $400 chips can be found for $78, I'd be happy to go into business with you---I'll handle all the freight and tariffs if you just pay for the chips themselves. Just send me a cashier's check made out to "CASH" ('cause that's my name, like "CHER" or "MADONNA"), and remember, they're only available in lots of 100...

    The "lots of 100" is the worrier---it means they'll most likely go to dishonest resellers and system builders only too happy to hide the missing $322 in markup.

  • Same Ploy, Different Century. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SmokeRing ( 861109 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:20AM (#14080782)
    50 years ago Chuanghui Genuine Gold Jewelry Company was stamping "14K" into brass jewelry. The enclosed warranty assured the buyer that "any discoloration of flesh is sometimes maybe."

  • AMD Power! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zebadias ( 861722 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:36AM (#14080825)
    No wonder those AMD64's are wipping the P4's!!

    Zeb
  • I would love to see how they can change the internals of a Celeron 1.7GHz to make the CPUID instruction return the ID of a Pentium 4 at 3.6GHz...

    Unless there is something I am not following, CPUID is executed entirely inside the processor and is impossible to fake.

    • Re:What about CPUID? (Score:3, Informative)

      by v1 ( 525388 )
      Article mentions the remarker is providing "software". This is very likely a patch to Windows to intercept the calls to the chip fetching its stats, and provide false information back to the caller. This means that windows, and most tools you run under windows, will report whatever the software wants you to hear. ("p4") Others here have kicked around ideas for other ways to verify what sort of a chip it is... try to execute instructions that are p4-only, etc. This is probably the only way to really ver
    • I would love to see how they can change the internals of a Celeron 1.7GHz to make the CPUID instruction return the ID of a Pentium 4 at 3.6GHz...

      I would love to see them change it to "This is a fake CPU and you paid over the odds for it you complete and utter mug!!"... and see how many of their customers noticed!

  • O..k.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rmsmith ( 930507 )
    Zhan defended Chuanghui's sale of remarked chips, saying the company makes no attempt to hide what was done to the chips or to pass them off as more valuable processors. "I tell them the truth," he said.

    I can't help but wonder, then, why bother masking the CPU's at all?

    • Re:O..k.. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by thparker ( 717240 )
      I can't help but wonder, then, why bother masking the CPU's at all?

      Because they aren't selling them to end users? They're going to sell them to someone who will build PC's and sell them as P4's. Of course Chuanghui is completely upfront with whoever they sell to -- that's because they're complicit in the fraud that's going to occur.

  • similar subject ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by DirtyFly ( 765689 )
    When I arrived at my current job, a lot of machines were AT&T Pentiums, a big lot of them... Last year we ditched the machines so I opened a couple to see if they had something usefull, guess what , I found 486s on ALL of them , never did I lookd at the bios of them neither at any kind of diagnose, so they passes ok, and believe me for 486s thet run quite well. Someone made a HUGE amount of cash with that deal...
  • This story reminds me of Packard-Bell repackaging used PCs as new in the 1990s.

    "Zhan defended Chuanghui's sale of remarked chips, saying the company makes no attempt to hide what was done to the chips or to pass them off as more valuable processors. "I tell them the truth," he said."

    Except for the fact that they remark them, they don't hide anything. Wait..does this even make sense?

  • Sandra (Score:5, Informative)

    by LaughingCoder ( 914424 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @08:49AM (#14080864)
    This is why I always run Sandra (http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/ [sisoftware.co.uk]) benchmarks on every system I build. I remember one time I bought a motherboard/CPU combo and when I ran Sandra it came out to be about 3 speed grades lower than I had paid for. I brought it back and the fellow at the store (who also built whitebox machines) wanted to know how I knew. Then of course he apologized profusely and gave me what I'd paid for in the first place.

    • Re:Sandra (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Perf ( 14203 )
      Then of course he apologized profusely and gave me what I'd paid for in the first place.

      Big mistake. You should have gotten your money back and went elsewhere. What good is a warantee from a company you cant trust?

      If he didn't want to return the money, have a local TV station do a special on your bogus computer. Then take him to small claims court.

      • Actually, I really think he didn't realize - in other words he got snookered by his source. When he installed Sandra he seemed delighted. That gave him a way to make sure HE wasn't being taken advantage of.

  • Let's not be too hard on them. (Score:5, Funny)

    by zenmojodaddy ( 754377 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @09:02AM (#14080922)
    Perhaps it was just because they find it easier to say 'Pentium' than 'Cereron'.

     
  • In terms of real world performance. 95% of all consumers wouldn't know the difference and if you told them they could increase the speed of their PC by 50% they probably wouldn't care. Or, if they did they would say that the result isn't good enough.
    • In terms of real world performance. 95% of all consumers wouldn't know the difference...


      Do you have any source at all to back that up?

      In any case, that would be no good reason to commit fraud.
      • While most the denizens of Geek-Nerdistan Slashdotania are busy pouring over websites to eek that last 0.14% performance out of their machines most people don't worry that much about it. I can't say for example that anyone I know who isn't a Geek ever deals with any computer problem in any way other than turning the machine off and going away for a while. Not the kind of people who obsess over performance. The point is that most of us have been sold a bill of goods. A performance level that is as irrelvant

  • Caveat Emptor (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stan_freedom ( 454935 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @09:41AM (#14081083) Homepage
    If your company purchases volume quantities of electronic components, or depends on suppliers that do, you need to be aware of what is happening in the Shenzen area of China. It has become a hotbed of counterfeit components and other criminal activity. Guangdong is another region of China where this is happening. The Chinese government appears to be doing little or nothing to interfere. Many companies pop up just long enough to do a couple of shady deals and then vanish.

    Our company buys wholesale quantities of electronic components, occasionally (but warily) from the Shenzen region of China. We have received re-marked and counterfeit parts which are accurate enough to get by our modest QA process. In one instance, a military customer of ours discovered a very expensive counterfeit part via industrial X-Ray before mounting it on their boards. As a result, we lost face with a good customer and had to take legal action to get our money back from our stateside supplier. Our supplier was stuck with the bill, as they purchased/imported the parts from Shenzen.

    What ever you do, never pay up front. This sounds like a no brainer, but these people will feed on the buyer's desperation. If they won't accept NET 1 terms, then run away. Once a deal goes bad, you have no legal recourse. Buyer Beware.

  • How this could be 100% okay (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ancient_Hacker ( 751168 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @09:53AM (#14081151)
    Let's say you're Intel's fab facility and you've just had a really good run of wafers. The recipes for deposition, diffusion, metalization ran *just* right. When you run the CPU's through the test phase, 95% of the CPU's test out at 3.4 GHz! Profit! Bonus time!

    But the sales department comes to you with a sad face. You made 85,000 3.4 GHz CPU's, but they have orders for only 1,000 of those, the rest of the orders are for 2GHz chips.

    Guess what they tell you to do?: Run out to the asemmbly line and quickly push the buttons to label and blow the chip fuses so they advertise themselves as the lower speed grade. Seems like a waste, but it keeps the customers and accountants happy.

    Happens all the time. I recently bought a batch of "300 volt" transistors. On the tester they all measured out at 650 to 670 volts.

    So there's a *slight* chance these guys have a batch of underlabeled CPU's.

  • between slapping a new badge on a car, and re-badging a processor. It's funny when someone does it to their own property, but a real shame when a retailer does it to a consumer.

  • Not at all surprising (Score:5, Informative)

    by BobGregg ( 89162 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:20AM (#14081288) Homepage
    I just got back from a month-long trip from the US to China with my wife, who is originally Chinese. One Chinese person we met described China as "king of the fake". It's scary - there is so much fake stuff everywhere. Some of the clothes are not very good quality, so it's obvious (plus you can see a girl over in the corner ripping the Chinese label out and sewing a Dolce & Gabbana label in with needle and thread). But the handbags, watches, that sort of thing? You're going to be hard-perssed to tell the difference between that and the "real" thing.

    When we arrived, my wife's dad told us not to buy tea in small towns, because he had seen a report on CCTV (China Central Television) saying that people were taking other leaves, dying them with green dye and using formaldehyde to cover the smell, then cutting that with a small amount of real tea. We laughed - until it happened. We brought them back a small canister of "best quality" tea that we'd picked up on our Yangtze River cruise. When they steeped it, the water turned bright, neon green. We looked closely - it was *not* tea. We don't know what it was, but it went in the toilet. Mind you, most of the people on our cruise were Chinese nationals, not outsiders!

    One of my own coworkers who is Chinese has told that you can't even trust bottled water - there have been reports of companies filling the bottles with tap water (unboiled, of course) and just sealing the lid, and selling it with fake Chinese "brand" labels. We found some bottles with suspicious lids, just buying from regular markets. I'm thinking my lucky stars that I didn't get sick.

    It's a bit scary. There's a certain level of trust required for capitalism to thrive. China has the capitalism in spades; but not the trust. It's absolutely the Wild, Wild East over there.
    • There's a certain level of trust required for capitalism to thrive.

      The scams you talk about are no different from the snake-oil scams of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the USA. What ended them? It wasn't trust. It was government regulation.
  • Frankly, this couldn't happen to a better bunch. I mean, really....the consumers think they get a deal of a lifetime, and go about their digital lives all happy and proud... Intel dumps some rank chips (last chance they get, now that Dell has seen the AMD light), Uncle Sam misses out (again) on tariffs and taxes he would just as soon spend on Humvees...the Taiwanese do what they do best, the Chinese make a killing in the bargain and I get to watch the whole thing go down from inside the PRC (I know the guys

  • Iridium Point Germany (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JeffTL ( 667728 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @10:43AM (#14081414)
    This is sort of like the Brand X fountain pens you find that sometimes cost more than one from a respectable brand; the nib imprint reads "Iridium Point Germany" and I understand them to be rather hit-and-miss in terms of nib quality. This inscription makes two claims -- firstly, that the point is hardened with iridium (which is often taken within the context of writing instruments to actually and somewhat confusingly entail ruthenium or various alloys that may not contain iridium in the first place), and secondly, that the nib was made in Germany. Often, neither of these claims is true -- I've heard tale of untipped IPGs, with no iridium or anything else on the end, and the nibs tend to be made in China. Note that it doesn't say "Made in Germany," just "Iridium Point Germany."
  • Development on the Dragon CPU [atimes.com] isn't working out too well, then?

  • Fake P4s, Fake Gucci. Same diff. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Stavr0 ( 35032 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:05AM (#14081580) Homepage Journal
    These should be considered as counterfeit items and deemed illegal for import, just like any knockoff Gucci bag. There are anti-counterfeit task forces operating in most countries' Customs departments, and Intel should make sure to block import of these CPU/boards before they even get in the country.

  • Happened with me once (Score:3, Interesting)

    by famazza ( 398147 ) <fabio.mazzarino@gmail . c om> on Monday November 21, 2005 @11:10AM (#14081614) Homepage Journal

    But it happened with an AMD processor.

    I've bought an AMD Atlhon XP 2500+ Barton, I've saw the box and the label, and also have checked the OPN (part number). When checking the processor using AMD's tool I've discovered that it was an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ TBread, less cache and slower CPU.

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