I’ve known for a while that Intel won’t be deploying Microsoft Vista internally. Now that the New York Times is reporting on it, you can know too.

Intel, the giant chip maker and longtime partner of Microsoft, has decided against upgrading the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft’s Vista operating system, a person with direct knowledge of the company’s plans said.

The person, who has been briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of Intel’s relationship with Microsoft, said the company made its decision after a lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff of the costs and potential benefits of moving to Windows Vista, which has drawn fire from many customers as a buggy, bloated program that requires costly hardware upgrades to run smoothly.

“This isn’t a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,” the person said.

An Intel spokesman said the company was testing and deploying Vista in certain departments, but not across the company.

What sounds like good news for my home town of Rio Rancho is bad new for Colorado Springs, CO. To open the new support center in Rio Rancho they are apparently closing one in Colorado Springs. 800 people have to move to Rio Rancho or lose their jobs.

HP told local workers that the Colorado Springs center is scheduled to close in the second half of next year, when the company plans to open a new center in the Albuquerque suburb that eventually will employ 1,200, said the sources, who said they were told not to disclose the information outside Hewlett-Packard.

I really feel for the people of Colorado Springs. In 2007 Intel announced they are closing their plant in Colorado Springs in which many of those people came to Rio Rancho. I checked out the Colorado Springs plant when they opened in 2000. It’s a beautiful town and I can imagine it will be tough for people to leave there.

HP is bringing 1300 jobs in the way of a support center to Rio Rancho. HP is receiving tax breaks and the 1300 jobs could be realized by 2012.

According to the Albuquerque Journal, it’s likely to be build near the new downtown in the same are where the Santa Anna Star Center is. Yet another building that can be added to the list of building to be built in the new downtown which actually are not.

In another example of crack reporting (or reporters on crack) at the Albuquerque Journal:

Jobs at Hewlett-Packard mostly would be in customer support and sales. They could help offset layoffs at Intel, which remains the state's largest private-sector employer despite cutting about 1,000 jobs during the last year.

I’m not sure how that works. The Intel layoffs were last year and new HP jobs are not likely to come for a while. A year or two at least. Maybe they will come in time for the next round of layoffs.

In any case based on what I read on the Consumerists, HP needs all the support center help it can get.

Note: I don’t actually know of a new round of layoffs at Intel. I’m mostly being sarcastic but I wouldn’t bet on anything in these times.

About 5 years ago Intel was giving PC to employees. I got one of those PCs, a HP Vectra VL420 MT. As a Mac guy I did use it for a few things, games mostly. This thing has no built in video and I upgraded the video card to a ATI Radeon 9800 All In Wonder. With the video card I am driving a Apple 21" Monitor via DVI.

A side effect of this new video card is apparently the BIOS cannot display through it. While the HP logo and start up text is suppose to display I get a black screen with the Apple monitor flashing it's LED. I don't get a display until the Windows login screen shows up, which displays normally and in full resolution.

I haven't had this thing powered up for several years. It's still a very capable computer and I want to run an alternative OS on it (that's for another exciting blog post). I need to access the BIOS. Any of my dozen or so readers have any ideas?