The news broke late yesterday that Intel and Skype are excluding AMD in an agreement that they have reached regarding how many callers are allowed in on a conference call. Intel-based chips will be allowed to have up to a 10-way conference call while AMD chips will be throttled at 5-way conversations. This is the most infuriating tech news I’ve read in a while. The fact that a software vendor would discriminate against the type of processor their user chooses is just borderline-insanity. I hope that there is enough uproar around this to cause them to rethink this position. Personally, I don’t use Skype because I despise actually “talking” to people, but as a tech-savvy guy and a huge AMD supporter, this is pitiful. If they go through with this, what’s next? Microsoft Office 2008 limited to only two open documents and AOL only allowing three concurrent IM conversations on AMD processors? Come on folks, the buck needs to stop here.
[...] A few weeks ago I ranted about the new Intel/Skype deal, and now it appears that AMD isn’t settling for the short end of the proverbial stick. DailyTech has the story about how Skype was subpoenaed by AMD to either prove or disprove that Intel offered them incentives to do as such in theor software. It really wouldn’t surprise me to discover that Intel did such a thing – they’re making a huge marketing push right now, and this (if they are proven innocent) would be just another feather in their cap. « County Line Road Development [...]