back to article Billion-euro Intel EU antitrust saga goes on and on and...

In its decade-long battle to reverse a one-time record European Union antitrust fine, Intel has made some small progress: its appeal continues. According to court documents, the European Court of Justice today referred Intel's case back to the lower General Court, which had denied the appeal in 2014. The EU Commission fined …

  1. steviebuk Silver badge

    And the lawyers...

    ...hope it goes on and on and on as they'll still get paid.

    The problem here is, should another case be either taken against Intel or Microsoft for the crap that is the Kaby Lake chip. Forcing people into using Windows 10 with it as previous versions of Windows won't be supported? Does this not sniff of Microsoft allegedly saying to Intel "Please only support Windows 10 on the Kaby Lake chip so we can then force people onto Windows 10. We'll give you lots of money if you do."

    Allegedly.

    I wonder.

    1. Archaon

      Re: And the lawyers...

      I am no lawyer but I doubt there's an antitrust case to be brought against a company for pushing users towards the latest version of the same software they were going to purchase anyway.

      My understanding is that anti-trust laws are intended to maintain fair competition between competing companies. If that is indeed correct, then by definition a company can't anti-trust itself - which is what you're suggesting.

      I agree that the limited options for Kaby Lake and onwards will at some point force many users OFF Windows 7/8/8.1. However Windows 10 is ultimately a new version of the same product. The lack of support for prior versions of Windows does NOT force users of other operating systems onto Windows as a platform. That is a key differentiator.

      If it prevented Linux or OS X from working then I think there would absolutely be a case there, but it doesn't.

      1. DanW

        Re: And the lawyers...

        > If it prevented Linux or OS X from working then I think there would absolutely be a case there

        It does

        > but it doesn't.

        It does

        However, it's a driver issue, the same way the latest NVidia or AMD graphics cards 'don't work with linux'

        ...until the drivers are written/updated :-)

        That's the same problem for Windows 7 - but *Microsoft* has made the decision not to provide updated drivers for the new chips for the old OS, although they obviously wrote them and provide them with the newer OS.

        1. Archaon

          Re: And the lawyers...

          @DanW that's a completely different scenario?

  2. DCFusor

    mate 18.2 on 7th gen

    Running without a hitch on an Acer aspire i5, I've added more ram and SSD disk to make it a yet more powerful machine. Even the nvidia geforce 940 works fine. I didn't have to do a thing to make linux do/support everything it normally does. Posting from it now.

    Too bad if you're addicted to windows. That's a microsoft-specific issue you've got there.

    It isn't Intel that doesn't support old stuff on new lamps here - it's MS.

  3. TReko

    No mention of the US case

    Intel was fined a similar amount in the US for preventing suppliers from shipping AMD chips. Have the appealed that one too?

  4. Claptrap314 Silver badge

    Justice delayed... That fine should go to the AMD shareholders at the time of the offence. Then another one to the consumers for the fact that Intel's monopoly is now effectively unconstrained.

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