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I guess there is nothing that can be done about existing processors.

Perhaps a bit of a dark thought, but fixing existing processors means you might not buy their new 'fixed' processor.

As a result they are not that motivated to fix it as well as they should.

I am reading about microcode updates, but I'm wondering if Dell doesn't update the BIOS for my (early Core i3, admittedly pretty old) computer am I SOL regardless of what Intel does?

The microcode updates can also be loaded via your OS if they are not installed via a firmware update. This happens before the OS itself is loaded early on in the boot stage.

See [0] for Linux and possibly [1] for Windows. Not 100% sure if Windows does handle this via Windows Updates or not.

[0] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Intel_microcode

[1] http://www.overclock.net/forum/5-intel-cpus/1633419-how-upda...

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