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All I want for Xmas is a cheap PC

What shoddy old rubbish is Intel trying to fob off on us this year? A piffling Pentium 4 at 2 GHz? Isn't there something nicer?

We all understand the year-end sales. All the prices go up before the gift-giving season; and then everything drops in price as they try to shift the expensive old tat off the shelves, to make way for the new stuff.

So if there are bargains in PCs before Xmas, what's going on? Well, what happens every Christmas?

Yes! - it must be time for Intel to launch a new chip to the trade.

Theoretically, PC buyers don't get to hear about new processors. But in reality, what always seems to happen is that news of the new processor gets out early, and people lay off buying the old one - in the hope of getting a far better PC in the New Year.

Traditionally, this leads to misery amongst the retailers. But this year, it may be different; this year, Dell has started the rush for the after-season sales, by announcing bargains before the shopping season really gets going.

This year, Intel hasn't announced something really exciting, like a Pentium Five. But it does have a new product. Instead of a new processor, the new wonder-product is the new Northbridge chip set, which supports ordinary SDRAM memory for the Pentium 4.
Yes, this should make a big difference. Yes, it is worth waiting for. Well, unless you see Pentium 4 machines at really tempting prices now.
When the Pentium 4 was announced, you may remember hearing how it wasn't any faster than a Pentium III processor of the same clock speed. Actually, it was rather slower.
Part of the reason for that was decision to release the chip before it was able to work with ordinary computer RAM; the result of a blunder inside Intel, where the SDRAM chipset had errors. So it was decided to work with Rambus memory instead. And it quickly became clear that there was simply no point in buying a 1.5GHz Pentium 4; the Pentium III was faster, and the AMD Athlon was faster, at that clock speed. Actually, they were faster even at 1 GHz clock speed. We had to wait for the 2GHz Pentium 4, before there was any sense in the chip.
The new Northwood chip set allows us to escape from the limitations of Rambus memory. And the official announcement came November. But although this almost certainly means a faster Pentium 4, in traditional style, it won't be shipping to the retail trade till January, or maybe February; the world's PC makers have decided that they are stuck with selling Rambus machines till then.
In theory, of course, if nobody blinked, the consumer would give in, and pay full price. Up till November, it looked as if they would hold their nerve; but the PC market just is not flourishing. And so, with sales so weak, the discount war was inevitable. If you doubt it, look on Dell's web site at its offer on a P4 - even with 100 gigabyte hard disk and fast GeForce display accelerator.
In the past, when Intel prepared a super-duper new machine for January, it had always planned to launch it in time for the Xmas season; and it's a good bet that this one was intended for it, too.
But chips are never ready when you expect.
This never worried Intel in the past, when Intel was the only game in town. It would occasionally get caught out, but generally, when PC makers found themselves having to sell off old stock because Intel had undercut them, Intel could just shrug and tell them that life was tough, sometimes.
This year, we have a different situation; there is quite a good a choice of high-end processors from Athlon and Duron chips from AMD.
For once, I'm tempted to recommend going with the current bargain. The drawback is that Rambus memory is more expensive; so if you buy a 256 megabyte memory block today, and want to increase it to 512 megabytes in a year, you may kick yourself.
What I can't promise is that the Northwood chip set really will be much faster than the current P4 motherboards. It may well be; many experts say it will be. But nobody can be sure. So it's possible that nobody will think it's really worth the wait, especially with prices already dropping on two Gig P4 machines.
If enough people decide not to wait, the Xmas season may just be a little less horrible for the trade than many will be fearing.

See also http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20011115corp_a.htm