THE most frustrating experience I’ve had in a long time was trying to score the new Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor. Why am I so nerdy about this? Well, as a heavy video editor (Hi Def, muthapucker!) I really need some fast and efficient stuff to accomplish my goals. To make a long story short, “Conroe”, or Core 2 Duo processors, as they are officially named are the shit. Beat everything else out there. Really quite perfect for video freaks like myself. So fuck it, I’ll buy one, right?
Intel and a bunch of retailers made a big deal out of the launch date: July 27th 2006 is when the world would finally become a better place for us movie dudes.
I thought I’d be smart and pre-order the little silicon devil well in advance – after some heavy searching I found a large retailer that claimed they’d have it in stock by the 27th. Credit card comes out and I’m a happy man.
As a matter of fact, I spend the next two weeks buying a fortune worth of the finest hardware a mortal man can buy and made sure everything would get to me no later than around the 27th. The point was to build my perfect video editing workstation from scratch. Don’t wanna be wastin’ no time, right?
July 27th rolls around. Big news, the media goes nuts and people are up in arms about the new Intel chip. Random acts of masturbation become common and I am in a state of delirium…
I get a call from my retailer. Turns out, the Intel chip hasn’t shipped yet. Worse yet, there is no news as to WHEN they’d get the chips in.
After speaking to no less than twenty different retailers it turns out NOBODY has the fucking thing yet. And nobody seems to know when they will the Core 2 Extreme in. Some say August. Some say October (!!!).
All of a sudden I spot light at the end of the technology tunnel: I found a retailer who did in fact have 34 of these bad boys in stock! I’m beside myself and call ‘em right up. Turns out the warehouse is closed so I have to call the next day to place my order. No biggie.
I call the next day. Guess what. ALL 34 chips have SOLD OUT since the night before.
Back to square one.
What I’ve learned
Most technology retailers are scumbags that’ll tell you they have something in stock when they don’t just so they can get your order. They just looooove to “backorder” shit for you. This is not merely a conclusion, it’s something several reps actually told me. Go figure.
I also learned that Intel really dropped the ball on this. Instead of touting July 27th as the date to get their new product they should have stated that July 24th is merely the date those chips leave their warehouse. Nobody can actually buy them until about two or three weeks later – IF YOU’RE LUCKY.
Finally, I learned that AMD is coming out with a quad core processor (so four processors in one basically). This won’t happen until sometime early next year but hey, I might just go through the same shit again at that time.
