One of its new features designed to enhance your Internet experience is the processor serial number, an electronic number added to every Pentium III processor.
Consumers can benefit from increased security on the web.
For business users, the processor serial number can be used by Information Technology departments for many uses such as information management or to help manage corporate PC assets. The Registration Wizard allows customers to review all information that is sent to Microsoft, as well as giving them the option to not send hardware configuration information. Microsoft does not use this hardware information for any marketing or user tracking purposes. After two consumer privacy groups called for a boycott of Intel's products, Intel instead asked PC makers to keep the chip ID turned on in BIOS and turned off by the software utility. PC makers IBM, Dell, and Gateway have decided to ship their systems with the feature disabled in BIOS rather than software.