If Apple were to do the same thing, ie - a 64GB iPad with 3G, but you could only use 16GB and WiFi until you paid for an "upgrade" at the same cost as the 16GB WiFi iPad, would people still be complaining about this?
The CPU is a black box. Intel is charging less for a crippled chip, but giving people the option to unlock existing functionality later if they desire.
I personally wouldn't buy into it, but there are end-users that would benefit from this more than from buying the better processor out of the gate.
There are, of course, going to be a
ton of people that will object to the "hardware as a service" model. It was what essentially doomed the original
DIVX DVD rental disc.
But hey, you know, if you don't want it, don't buy it. It seems that people are saying this is a step backwards, or is even evil. It's a product and market segmentation technique, what is so "evil" about it?
If you could get a fast i7 quad core machine that was locked to two cores for the cost of a two core machine, knowing that you could upgrade it instantly online later, you might make that choice if you don't have the money now for the full setup.
However, there are some interesting questions I'm curious about: Is the change permanent (does it alter the silicon/flash/eeprom/non-volatile storage on chip) or does it require software to unlock it each time it's powered up? Does the unlock work on all popular operating systems, or is it limited to just windows? How is the hardware enabled in the CPU - in other words is an unlocked X the same as an X that doesn't require unlocking (ie, are there additional logic paths for the lock/unlock bits that slow the processor down)? Once unlocked can I play with the bits and selectively disable portions of the processor for either power savings, or for performance testing/tweaking? How do you meet the yeti zombie in PvZ?
