What has this to do with corporate greed? It seems Intel is trying a new business model and in the end it is up to the Customers if they are willing to spend additional 50$ or not. Also, how is this different from a software upgrade? When anyone wants to upgrade to Win 7 premium from Win 7 home...what do you think actually happens? Microsoft just enables some part of the code which was previously disabled. Intel is just giving us some more options.

This is not as bad as it looks. In fact, this could be real good for the Customers. This model will allow me to pay less for a machine when I don't need that much performance. If the performace is not meeting my needs, then I may use the upgrade card and increase the life of my machine. I don't see why folks here are making big deal out of it. How is software upgrade different from hardware upgrade? Even Microsoft and Apple do the same where they charge different price for different features and technically charge less for features by disabling some. So I think software and hardware upgrades are analgous. I actually like that Intel is thinking out of the box and trying to do something different. This only means better and more options for the Customer.