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INTEL LAUNCHES NEW CENTRINO |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Monday, 23 January 2006 |
Intel officially launched its Centrino Duo platform in Australia with support form a raft of first, second and even third tier notebook vendors in attendance to demonstrate the general industry push to the new dual core CPUs and Centrino chipsets.
Intel officially launched its Centrino Duo platform in Australia with support form a raft of first, second and even third tier notebook vendors in attendance to demonstrate the general industry push to the new dual core CPUs and Centrino chipsets.
Among the vendors and system builders planning to offer the new systems there was not a great deal of innovation to be seen. Outside of an increasing number of fingerprint scanners, built-in cameras and in the case of Acer and Lenovo a shift to include 3G wireless broadband capabilities, the biggest change is in the form factor of the new devices.
The low-power, low heat features of the new 65nm processor designs is allowing system designers to significantly reduce the size of the devices. Accordingly, many of the low-cost choices were slimmer than we have seen in the past, all run incredibly cool – eliminating that leg burn – and all feature impressive battery life along with the increased performance.
Another notable note about the new notebooks is the increasing number of sub-notebooks and an almost complete transition to the widescreen display format. With screen sizes running from 13-inch up the new range are almost exclusively in 16:9 format. Only a few hold-outs such as Lenovo are sticking to the 4:3 ratio screens for the time being, though we have to ask ourselves how long this will last.
Lenovo wants to establish its business notebook credentials a little longer in Australia following the acquisition of IBMs PC division. Once done however, we’ll start to see some of the more innovative designs the company is known for in Asia. For the moment however, its black business ThinkPads all the way. The company hinted that it does actually plan to make a move on the retail consumer market in the medium terms, so we can probably expect to see some movement in this area by the third or fourth quarter this year.
Although most of the Australian mobility announcement was old news after making headlines at this year's CES show in Las Vegas in early January, the event offered the first opportunity for the Australian press to see the new systems in action.
The new systems, likely to be available locally in early March typically feature a minimum 512MB RAM (some come standard with 1GB), 60-100GB SATA HDD (onle the really low cost devices are sticking with the standard IDE drives), DVD dual combo drives were pretty much standard across the ranges and plentiful I/O port with DVI, TV tuners, card readers and such all making an appearance from several vendors.
Due to the low power usage and subsequent heat reductions many of the new models are slim, light and have impressive battery life.
Typical models weigh in at around 2-2.5kg and with a six cell battery deliver up to six hours from a single charge. However, some standouts included the Lenovo T60 14.1 inch (4:3 ratio) which feels almost weightless at 1.2kg. However, for you $3,499 RRP the sub-notebook comes equipped only with a CDRW/DVD ROM drive.
Apart from the 40 or so percent power improvement quoted by Intel and borne out by the system builders, the new dual core processors offer a significant improvement in processing power. Quoted by intel at 70% better than the existing Pentium M series, the company offered a benchmarking demo using real world applications.
Once the monthly magazines get their reviews out into the market, Mobilised expects the growth in notebook sales to be further supported by the new CPU’s inclusion in the specifications. The performance demonstration run at the press event indicated that the benchmarks for these new devices are going to be great, making it easier to convince would be buyers to upgrade existing systems or enter the mobility and desktop replacement market for the first time.
In a two notebook shootout: one a late 2005 notebook versus a new Optima Core Duo Cenotris DW sub-notebook (12-inch) the new technology significantly outperformed the legacy system in both multi-media and business productivity scenarios – the multi-tasking capabilities of the dual core processor significantly helped out the latter when two processor intensive tasks were imposed on the systems.
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