Michael A. Stone wrote:
>
> > Would be interesting to see if there is any performance improvement with
> > business applications or web server or mail server or DB processing ....
>
> business applications i couldn't tell you.. though i imagine a spreadsheet
> would sing. improvements in standard server applications would be
> unlikely. databases might see some improvement, but it's hard to say.
Interestingly, that wasn't the question the boss asked, though you'd
think it would be.
I got asked in staff meeting this week if this new "feature" meant it
would make it easier for websites to track where our foundation systems
were in other people's web systems. Hadn't thought about that, but
admittedly it was a good a point. Also implications regarding personal
purchases people might make from work systems, and the nasty trail they
might leave.
Since we buy from Dell, I emailed them about this concern, and the fact
that I was going to be asked to find a different vendor if they couldn't
continue to at least make PII's available (assuming they would get those
out of inventory ASAP, since that's their practice). Got the following
back:
-----------
Dear Brett,
Your concern has been heard, and we have changed the Bios of our
unpcoming PIII systems to address your wishes.
Based on the marketplace reaction to Intel's Processor Serial Number
(P#) feature, Dell has chosen to implement a BIOS switch in our
upcoming Pentium III systems that will disable P# as Dell's default
setting. With this default setting, users will not need to do
anything further with regard to disabling the P# feature to protect
their privacy. Through DellPlus, we will offer large corporate
accounts the ability to turn P# back on before we ship systems if
those accounts want to use P# as a security feature. For consumers,
we will make it possible to turn P# back on once they receive the
system if they so choose.
As always, we very much appreciate hearing from our valued customers.
Thank you for your interest in Dell.
----------
Was pleased to hear this. Unfortunately, it didn't answer the PII
question :P
Anyway, thought I'd pass that along. At least one vendor has decided to
disable the feature at the BIOS level.
B
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