Saturday, October 6, 2012

Surprisingly Poor Website Interface from Industry Leader Intel

My computer's been running a little slow lately so I decided that perhaps it is time to consider upgrading my computer. I was looking at CPUs on Intel's website trying to compare models and was surprised that they no longer linked features with the related information. To give you an example, if you take a look at this comparing processors web page I loaded up, you will find that, in order to find out information about things like Intel® HD Graphics 4000, Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, Intel® vPro Technology, Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology... and other technological advancements, one has to go to Google and then perform a search to find out more about the technology. As a consumer I find this quite frustrating. For Intel I'm worried that by having the customer leave the website this opens the door for competitors like AMD to be able to target the same technology that Intel is trying to promote and state how theirs is better. One thing about the Internet is that it allows almost anyone to design a web page. In the case of this webpage it looks like Intel has decided to hand it over to the computer engineers who know exactly what Intel® VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT) means and didn't think that consumers would be unfamiliar with these high-tech CPU industry technologies. Even the order of the webpage leaves something to be desired. For example, buried at the bottom of the page were the most important features that offered real advantages to choose Intel over the competition. In the more expensive top of the page section they have decided to highlight things such as the bus type, FSB parity, size of the lithography, whether or not the CPU has a supplemental SKU. My suggestion for Intel is take my suggestions and apply them to this web page, get some user feedback and hire someone with a copy writing or marketing background to be able to make it so that the layperson can get a better grasp on what this technology means. Now if you excuse me I'm going to try to figure out if having a 26.7% lower max TDP on my CPU will make any difference to my computer speed.