Cramer's Wall St. Confidential: Intel's Outside

Ahead of Intel's (INTC Quote) earnings call tonight, Jim Cramer said look elsewhere for solid tech plays.

Cramer told Wall St. Confidential host Aaron Task that he feels "very strongly" that Advanced Micro Devices (AMD Quote) cannot be knocked out by a big price war in chips.

Intel, while a "terrific" play on Microsoft's pending release of the Vista operating system, "is not nearly as good as buying the buyers of semiconductors," which is why Cramer said he's been recommending Hewlett-Packard (HPQ Quote), which he owns for his charitable trust, Action Alerts PLUS.

"It's down today, which makes no sense," he said of Hewlett-Packard.

In other stock talk:

Cramer said to ignore the Symantec (SYMC Quote) good-news story.

He called the company a "nonstarter" and a value trap. In fact, Cramer said Symantec reminds him of a series of software companies in the 1990s that never came back. "I feel that those who are on this horse betting on a comeback are really hurting themselves and should move on," he said.

On the subject of homebuilders, Cramer said Centex (CTX Quote) and KB Home's (KBH Quote) land-option writeoffs are both bullish and bearish.

The problem with these companies, he said, is that "their eyes were too big." Therefore, as they take drastic measures such as writeoffs, people need to recognize that some of these companies waited to take action because they still believed good things were around the corner for the housing sector, Cramer said.