I have contacted Intel regarding compensation for the Meltdown flaw. I tested the patches and the performance loss is unacceptable. I’ll have to replace hardware because of this.
Initial contract requested they enter negotiation, or provide a contact address for a Small Claims Court action.
Anyone else contacted Intel yet? I see there are some class action lawsuits in the US.
I’m trying to calculate reasonable compensation. One Xeon system will have to be replaced at least 5 years early. I’d say about the same for my laptop and maybe 3 years for my workstation. New hardware will require Windows 10 upgrades too. Total replacement part costs are around £4000-5000 I’d estimate, plus labour which I normally charge at £250/hour.
I cannot really help as i am not familiar with the legal system in the UK but s it possible so give more details on the how you tested the performance loss and how much that one is?
Only 5000 euro for two end user machines and a xeon system? Damn, good deals!
On topic though, I haven’t talked to Intel about it. We’re just going to switch to AMD. Might be worth talking to them though.
I don’t trust Class Action lawsuits. Even at this scale, the only ones who really benefit are the lawyers on both sides. (imagine all the billable hours)
The other thing is that joining the class usually prohibits you from seeking any additional compensation in regards to the issue. To use an example, the Nvidia class action awarded $30 per GPU for people who bought the 970. Imagine if they did that here.
Oh, it’s a $800 part that’s only 30% less effective in very specific workloads? Just give everyone $100 and call it a day.
There’s no way that will cover it.
Don’t get me wrong, I like class actions in a clean room, but in practice, they seem to not work out very well for anyone except the lawyers involved.
LOL! You’re talking about Intel. They’ve already figured out who to bribe and your suit will go nowhere. Save yourself the aggravation and buy any replacements you need. You might get a $3 check as part of a class action settlement in a decade or so.
To me this would be tricky, and some of what you have written seems odd to me - lacking context I guess…
One Xeon system will have to be replaced at least 5 years early
5 years early? That implies you expect a system to last a lot longer than 5 years - I haven’t worked anywhere that would expect more than 5 years out of workstations/servers. What generation is this system - are you sweating hardware/software that intel would claim is reasonably at end-of-life, out of vendor support and due for replacement anyway? Remember small claims for faulty goods will look at ‘reasonable’ life-span.
New hardware will require Windows 10 upgrades too.
Surely it will come pre-installed? sure, you will loose some time, configuring it, but that’s part -and-parcel of running a business, you always have to allocate time to patching/maintenance etc. so you would have to demonstrate loss of earnings caused by Intel.
plus labour which I normally charge at £250/hour.
Wow, lucky you, I guess you do niche work that only pulls in a few hours a day? Else you are pulling in ~ £10k per 40 hour week which would kind of make this a moot point as you can’t be far off retirement
If you really do earn the big bucks (and power to you) a UK small claims court normally only deals with claims of not exceeding £10k. If you have lost work worth more that that, then it’s a different track for you and I suspect the legal fees could be enough to make you think twice - should you loose.
From the anecdotal evidence I have so far the worst hit stuff is where lots of context switching is happening - databases where page swaps between disk and RAM and parallel processing occurs are some of the worst hit applications. Some of these problems can likely be tuned out or eased by adding more RAM. I have no idea what software you use, but you might find workarounds or solutions that don’t cost the earth?
If you sue, make sure you have your performance loss claim backed up with actual data. Just throwing out numbers without backup isn’t going to get you anywhere. Same goes for labor time.
And one has to remember that Intel is a massive corporation. They have an entire legal team on payroll that I can almost guarantee is more specialized in stuff like this than just about any lawyer off the street. If they don’t feel like paying, they’re going to make sure they don’t have to.
Small claims count relies on he who has the evidence. @w.meri is spot on, you will need to show evidence of the performance loss and evidence that shows it is business effecting and that cost. Intel will likely have already sorted out a good counter argument for any claims they decide to show up for.
You won’t get windows 10 costs, you won’t get that kind of labor cost for the work you are citing, you can hire labor for more than half the price.
This. Intel will rip this up in court. Mundanes still think we’re in the late '90s where computers are obsolete as soon as you get them out of the box.
It’s a home server, not a company one. I use a lot of VMs on it, which are crippled by this patch.
Intel support that system in so far as they released a fix for the ME issue. I don’t care if it’s EOL in their eyes, to me it’s fine and I expect 10 years from it. Even consumer grade stuff is expected to last 6 years by courts here.
As for my hourly rate, yeah I charge a lot more for stuff outside work hours. Occasionally people pay it too.
