Ever wonder if the “latest and greatest” technology is really better than the stuff the “latest and greatest” is meant to replace?   I do—and it’s not just because I have a fear of change.  (Truth be told,  most lawyers have a fear of change.  It's a phobia that's hard-wired into every lawyer's brain in the second year of law school).

If you’ve ever said to yourself, “You know, I liked the old way better….”, then you should check out the case of Barbara’s Sales Inc. v. Intel Corp., which was handed down by the Illinois Supreme Court late last month.  (Let me know if you can't find a copy online, and I'll get one to you.)

In the case, numerous owners of personal computers sued Intel, claiming that Intel falsely promoted its Pentium 4 microprocessor as being the “best” or “fastest” central processing unit on the market .  The owners claimed that the previous version of the processor—the Pentium 3—was as fast as or faster than the Pentium 4, and that Intel’s advertisements, therefore, were deceptive and unfair.

Ok, let's pause right here, and take a "time out" to make sure we all know what we're talking about.  We're talking about microprocessors—the stuff upon which Intel was founded.  If you’re reading this blog, you already know what a microprocessor is.  But just in case you stumbled upon this blog accidentally and have no clue about the innards of the computer that you’re using, I’ll give you the nickel tour of your computer’s brain.

A microprocessor (a/k/a “processor”) is often referred to as the “brain” of a computer.  A principal measure of performance for a computer is the speed of its processor.  As the speed of a processor increases, the processor can process more instructions, which results faster overall performance of the computer.  One historical measure of processor speed is called “clock speed,” which is measured in hertz.

Ok, tour over.  Back to the case……

The court record revealed that various internet and mass media reports questioned the Pentium 4's performance immediately after it was released. These reports noted that the Pentium 4’s superior clock speed did not “tell the whole story” as to the actual performance of the Pentium 4 processor.

Several sources criticized the microarchitecture underlying the Pentium 4, saying that Intel's representations as to the Pentium 4’s high clock speeds were a deliberate marketing attempt to make the processor appear faster to the uninformed consumer, compared to the slower-clocked Pentium III and AMD processors. In fact, certain performance tests (commonly known as “benchmarks”) showed that the slower-clocked Pentium III and an AMD processor were “faster” than the Pentium 4. Notably, the extent of the speed discrepancy between the processors depended on the benchmark being used, and was often measured in milliseconds—too fast for any human to measure or notice without the aid of software.

Intel argued that the Pentium 4's greatest advances were in areas such as 3D gaming, digital video creation, MP3 encoding, and streaming video.  In those areas, Intel argued, the Pentium 4 was "faster" than the Pentium 3.  Intel also emphasized that differences in system hardware and software design could affect actual performance for particular users, apart from the performance of the actual microprocessors themselves.

The Court found in favor of Intel—but not because the Pentium 4 was faster than any other microprocessor.  In dismissing the case against Intel, the court held that Intel’s statements about the Pentium 4 were “puffery”, a legal word that describes “meaningless superlatives that no reasonable person would take seriously”. 

The court noted that sellers of products use “puffery” all the time, and that puffery such as “high-quality” or “perfect” or “best” could not form the basis of a lawsuit for consumer fraud.  In other words, the court found that when the words "best" or "perfect" float across your television screen in the context of a commercial, you would be acting "unreasonably" to take those words seriously—and you certainly can't sue if it turns out that the product is not the best, or is far from perfect.

So, is the Pentium 4 processor better than the Pentium 3?  Yes.  And no.  Actually, I have no idea, and neither does the court.  But let’s not get caught up in the "who is faster than whom" argument.  Let's leave that issue to the technology freaks that measure life by the millisecond.

There’s a bigger, and more obvious, lesson to be learned here: much of the hype behind the “latest and greatest” technology is, in fact, just hype.  Sometimes the new stuff is better than the old stuff, but sometimes it isn’t.

Now if you will all excuse me, the Celeron processor that I’m using in my IBM Thinkpad X41 indicates it’s well after midnight.  Hmmm, maybe I should bump that baby up to a Pentium 4……