Word: centrino
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...MacBook's strengths come to light while in use. Apple was smart to skip over development of a G5 notebook, and go right to the Intel Core Duo. It's not easy to watch the highest-definition QuickTime movie trailers on a G4 PowerBook, and on many Centrino-based Windows notebooks, it can look pretty choppy, too. But on the MacBook Pro, 1080p movie trailers are smooth running...
...wonders. Otellini, the first nonengineer to helm Intel, has been stressing consumer-friendly products over speedier chips in his speeches for the past four years (he calls the strategy by the awkward name "platformization"). He put the plan to work in 2003 with another of his pet projects--the Centrino--a set of chips specifically designed for wi-fi-enabled laptops. For wi-fi capability, all you really need is the Pentium M, the chip at the heart of Centrino, but Otellini wanted to sell a bundle of chips along with it that would help maintain a laptop's battery...
Today, according to Mercury Research, Intel chips are inside 87% of laptop PCs. And in February 2005, Centrino got an upgrade to help it run music and graphics better--stepping onto graphics chipmaker NVidia's turf. With successes like that, it's no accident that Otellini is respected by Intel insiders as a steady hand--a welcome change in a company famous for its bitter boardroom battles. "In the Andy Grove era, it was very raucous," says Andy Bryant, Intel's CFO. "It was not unusual to have loud arguments in public places. Paul is a firm believer...
...thing, Otellini's "platformization" still has to prove itself in areas other than Centrino. Later this year Intel will announce an as-yet-unbranded platform for desktop computers (dubbed Desktrino by company insiders) that takes advantage of Intel's dual-core technology. Dual-core puts two brains on the same chip, which makes it easier to run multiple applications at the same time. But Desktrino may be outmoded before it is born. IBM, Sony and Toshiba took a surprise lead recently when they announced production of their Cell processor, which has eight brains to Desktrino...
Last spring Intel commissioned a surfboard shaper in North Devon, England, to design a board with an embedded tablet PC. Why? So Intel could tout its Centrino processor at beach festivals around the globe. Equipped with wi-fi, the Wireless Technology Surfboard enables the surfer to send e-mail, shoot videos (using the built-in webcam) and, yes, surf...