So if you’ve bought one of three different processors from Intel you can upgrade it. Sounds good, right? Don’t get too excited – because rather than demonstrate that they’re willing to throw a bone to regular customers, they’re going to charge you to upgrade it – and all at a price/performance ratio that is pretty subpar.

This reminds me of the days when you could buy a US Robotics modem (I think they were 33.6 baud at the time) and upgrade it to 56k down the line. In fact, this is virtually the same. It was stupid then and it is stupid now – the performance difference was negligible, and the cost was excessive (about $50). In the end I gained virtually no boost in speed, but I was $50 shorter.

It’s odd – about 15 years ago we had this line of thinking, and it was swept away as we evolved into a better industry. Suddenly we moved to the DSL/cable age and providers stopped pulling this crap. Intel should learn from the past on this one.