From the excuse-o-meter
So sales of PCs and laptops have tanked because of a hard drive shortage?
Nothing to do with tablets and smartphones then?
Chip maker Intel has slashed its final quarter outlook, admitting it will fall short of the company's previous forecast due to a hard drive supply shortage - sparked by flooding in Thai disk factories. The vendor said it now expects to bank Q4 revenue of about $13.7bn (£8.7bn), compared to an earlier prediction of $14.7bn for …
yeah sounds like BS to me...
most PCs don't require a 2TB SATA drive. a 64G or 128G SSD would work just fine in most cases, and make the PC -much- more responsive, and keep those warp-speed CPUs fed with data faster.
so why are PC makers not just flipping over to build with smaller SSDs instead?
It's because the recent margin collapse. The flood is a convenient story to keep the sheeple calm..
Yes there was damage, yes production stopped while they clean up, but it's not why intel is having problems. Intel didn't have their plant flooded. Look at Dupont they didn't have their plant flooded.