"This is an unseasonably strong result that they're guiding to, and I think people need to use that as the backdrop," said Doug Freedman, an analyst with Broadpoint.AmTech. But some investors seemed unnerved that Intel wouldn't give more specifics. Intel said it wouldn't give a detailed revenue forecast because it's still too hard to accurately predict results in this environment. One unknown is whether people are buying significantly more PCs, or whether Intel is mainly benefiting from computer makers replenishing their chip inventories, which had been whittled to low levels to save cash. "The strength of end demand is not clear," Intel's chief financial officer, Stacy Smith, said in an interview. In a broad sense, Intel's outlook was relatively upbeat, given the uncertainty about the length and depths of the recession. As the world's largest semiconductor company, Intel's results help gauge demand for personal computers, and are a proxy for the health of overall technology spending.