The most virulent anti-Intel faction is led by Darek Mihocka, founder and president of Emulators, Inc., a prominent emulation software company. When it comes to his computers, Mihocka is Old School. A 15-year industry veteran, he has worked continuously through the days of Atari, Macintosh and PCs, and still works with Atari emulation software to this day.

In the not-so-distant past, Mihocka was an Intel advocate. Now he's an Intel advocate in the same way Dr. Laura is a gay rights advocate. On his company's Web site, Emulators.com, he's twice critiqued the new design of the Pentium 4. "Intel's new flagship Pentium 4 processor," he wrote, "[is] an engineering disaster that will hurt both consumers and computer manufacturers for some time to come."

He blames the design flaws not on lack of ability, but on confused priorities. "Just like at Microsoft and just like at Apple," wrote Mihocka, "the marketing scumbags at Intel have prevailed and pushed sound engineering aside." He was so upset by the Pentium 4, he urged his Web visitors to boycott the company until Intel makes a better processor.

Intel spokesman George Alfs denies the accusation that marketing interests have affected Intel's engineers, but Mihocka is not alone in his assessment. Mihocka and other observers say that Intel's engineers have been asked to accomplish goals attached to fuzzy concepts such as "Internet SIMD Streaming Extension" and "NetBurst Architecture," -- the design names of the Pentium III and 4, respectively. But the mandates for these ideas are grounded in market research, not in the physics of semiconductivity.

Intel's Alfs says the new design name is a reflection of the chip's awesome power. "The Pentium 4 has 1.5 gigahertz and a 400 megahertz bus, what we call a system bus," he said, referring to a piece of chip hardware that connects the central processing unit (CPU) to the main memory chips. "We believe that this allows for a certain explosive power, or 'bursts' if you will."

Mihocka and other experts scoff. To them, the design names are blatant marketing ploys intended to capitalize on the Internet and MP3s. On Intel's Web site, the Pentium 4 is described as "technology for the Internet and beyond." Thus "NetBurst Architecture"; the idea that microchips can be designed specifically for the Internet, which some hardware-watchers consider a dubious claim.

One of the first to challenge Intel on its "NetBurst" marketing strategy was Thomas Pabst, CEO and founder of Tom's Hardware Guide. Pabst, a German-born doctor in his 30s who lives in the U.K., founded Tom's Hardware in 1996 with the goal of creating an independent, unbiased testing agency. Pabst developed his uncanny computer hardware savvy by disassembling and reassembling his old Intel 8086 CPU in the early 90s. Now he's one of the most trusted hardware gurus in the world.

When geeks want to know which toys to buy, they go to him. On the release date of the Pentium 4, he published a 20-page dissertation on what he dubbed "the most controversial ... processor on the market." Traffic at his site hit an all-time high, quickly scaling up to 1 million visitors.

In his professional opinion, the Pentium 4 isn't a bad processor, says Pabst. His article depicted it as a powerful chip with extraordinary room for growth. But he also observed serious flaws, and expressed dismay at Intel's inability to live up to its own hype. "Whatever Pentium 4 is right now," says Pabst. "It is certainly not the greatest and best performing processor in the world."

He has a particularly hard time understanding what Intel means by the term "NetBurst architecture": "Believe me, your Web pages won't pop up any faster, downloads will take just as long, and the Internet won't 'burst' either." He believes marketing is to blame for Intel's desire to lead consumers into thinking that the Pentium 4 is the premier Internet microchip. "Since the Internet is still hip, it is a perfect vehicle to market Pentium 4," says Pabst. "Again, 'NetBurst' shows its roots in Intel's marketing department."

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