If you just can't wait...
It looks like Shelley Raja, MD of Bolton tech e-tailer SCAN, has had a busy 24 hours. Following his exclusive interview with HEXUS yesterday, in which he revealed the effect on the UK channel of the design flaw in Intel's Cougar Point chipset, Raja spoke once more to us this afternoon, having only just completed negotiations designed to soften the blow to SCAN's customers.
Raja has come to an agreement with Intel, ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI, to provide its customers with an alternative to having to wait months for a Sandy Bridge system. You can now buy a board, bundle or system with the Cougar Point chipset from SCAN if you want to, and the vendors guarantee they will replace it with a new one, once they're available. "All the vendors will swap-out," said Raja.
Of course it will be up to the customer to decide whether or not to buy a product with a known issue. But, given that the issue affects the durability of the product, and probably a minority of them, there's every chance that a system containing this chip will function perfectly normally until the replacement arrives.
Whether people will want the hassle of dismantling their system and replacing the motherboards, however, is another matter.
We understand that shipping will be covered by the vendor, although the precise logistics of how this will occur have yet to be revealed. And while this arrangement came as a direct result of SCAN's negotiations with the vendors, it's safe to assume they'll extend the facility to other e-tailers and parts of the channel.
