AMD's Document Preservation Subpoenas Granted

[Steve]

Following on from Saturday's news story AMD has had their motion for leave to serve document preservation subpoenas granted by the U.S. District Court of Delaware. In going after Intel, AMD needs the cooperation of as many OEMs and retailers as possible. They have to tread carefully, which they seem to realise, judging from the short press release they have issued.

In light of the judicial order, AMD’s counsel will engage in discussions with 30 third-parties in an effort to implement the order so as to preserve evidence while imposing on them as little an administrative burden as possible.

It's going fairly smoothly for AMD so far, but how long before Intel finds a high profile OEM or retailer to defend them by damning AMD and their products?

[nichomach]

Won't matter if they do; the point is that if the documents subpoenaed reflect abuse of a monopoly position then Intel are guilty; one wonders to what extent Dell will co-operate. If they DO co-operate and their docs reveal the kind of pricing practices that, let's face it, we ALL suspect, then that could be a serious issue. That said, it could work for them in the long run; look at my example - I'm going to be putting in to replace our Exchange server soon. All my servers up to this point have been Poweredges. Will my new one be? I seriously doubt it - and why? Dell don't sell Opterons, simple as. An HP DL385 with a couple of 265 dual cores in would just about do me nicely, methinks, although that depends on availability and I'd have no intrinsic difficulty with buying a Sun v40z .

Now I suspect that a lot of Dell's server/workstation customer base HAS to be thinking the same way, and when they factor in how much horsepower they'd be buying, along with the fact that they'd be giving nothing away in reliability or warranty cover, then I think the big D might be quite glad of being "forced" into opening up a bit.

[Steve]

Originally Posted by nichomach

Won't matter if they do

It will matter... it'll give me something fun to write about

[nichomach]

OK, yes, the entertainment value'll be IMMENSE , I grant you that; but you get my point on the server/workstation side?