whenever various background processes decide they need lots of CPU (e.g. windows update) I'm not convinced this is Intel's fault. It's anecdotal, but I do web

whenever various background processes decide they need lots of CPU (e.g. windows update) I'm not convinced this is Intel's fault. It's anecdotal, but I do web browsing every day on a cheap, consumer-level HP laptop from 2007 with a Core 2 Duo, 2 GB of RAM and a big dumb mechanical HDD. I hardly ever hear the fan. Using Debian with XFCE and few unnecessary background processes.