intel

Buying a PC is always confusing, and chip companies aren't doing as good a job with some important customers as they might like, according to a new survey from In-Stat.

Even early adopters of technology are having trouble associating the right brand with the right company, said Ian Lao, an analyst with In-Stat and author of the report. Some brands, like Via's Eden, are only recognized by half of early adopters, he said. (I'd actually say that's pretty good for a company as tiny as Via).

The most well-recognized brand is still Intel's Pentium brand, … Read more

Sunday night's 60 Minutes, usually a show at the tail end of the technology bell curve, weighed in on a surprisingly relevant topic--Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child initiative. If you've been following the MIT professor's story, you'll know he set out several years ago to develop a cheap laptop for children in third-world countries, featuring a low-power AMD chip, flash memory instead of a traditional hard drive, and even built-in Wi-Fi and a Webcam.

Closer to $175 than the originally projected $100, the systems are being rolled out in small test markets. We actually … Read more

Apparently, this world isn't big enough for two low-cost PC projects.

Nick Negroponte, founder and leader of the One Laptop Per Child project, told 60 Minutes Sunday night that he would have 3 million orders for the $100 laptop (at this point, really $175) if not for Intel's "shameless" business practices.

"Intel has hurt the mission enormously," Negroponte said. How? By apparently distributing marketing materials questioning the features of the One Laptop (it's really called the XO) and by giving away an Intel-designed laptop called the Classmate PC to poor nations around the … Read more

Today's platform announcement from Intel may have left you scratching your head, and rightly so. After all, the company is replacing its Centrino Duo platform with a whole new platform called...Centrino Duo. And then there's Centrino Pro. Both of which, up until this morning, were called Santa Rosa (and will probably still be referred to by that moniker for the next few months). Confused yet?

Fortunately, we've had some time to wade through the marketing buzz and technical specs to figure out the whole story. Boiled down, it's this: the new Centrino Duo platform includes a handful of new Core 2 Duo processors; a new chipset with a faster front-side bus and an optional dedicated memory cache; a new graphics solution with a larger allocation of memory; and a new wireless card with support for Draft-N wireless.

Centrino Pro, meanwhile, has all those new features, plus additional remote management technologies designed for businesses. Essentially a mobile version of the vPro technology found on desktops, the Centrino Pro enhancements let IT managers upload configuration changes to a PC over a network. Centrino Pro also allows for asset management and remote diagnostics independent of the laptop's operating system, meaning the machine doesn't have to be on for IT workers to access it.

As with every iteration of notebook technology, all this is supposed to add up to better performance and longer battery life (which, thus far, it more or less has--see our first few reviews of Santa Rosa systems). While the changes aren't revolutionary, we do think they're worth seeking out if you're already in the market for a new laptop. After the page break you'll find our rundown of all the new Centrino features and what they mean to you.… Read more

Every major PC manufacturer is announcing a lineup of new laptops this morning. These systems are all part of Intel's new Santa Rosa platform, which to the laptop-buying public means they'll have either a Centrino Pro or Centrino Duo sticker on them somewhere.

Our colleague Michelle Thatcher will go into further detail on the Santa Rosa specs later today, but for the most part, it involves having one of several new mobile Intel CPUs (From the T7000-series), support for Wireless N networking, Intel's new 965 chipset, and some additional onboard memory--Intel calls it Turbo Memory--for faster booting. … Read more

Exactly which new laptops will debut with Intel's Santa Rosa platform may be the worst-kept secret in the tech world. Which is why it brings us some relief to report that at least one of the systems to be built on Santa Rosa has officially been announced.

At a morning event in Shanghai (that's evening here, thanks to the curvature of the Earth), HP revealed the Pavilion dv9500t, a follow-up to the desktop replacement dv9000 series. Aside from the new components, the dv9500t is very similar to its predecessor, with only a few small tweaks to the feature … Read more

Details on pretty much every high-profile laptop featuring Intel's equally high-profile new Santa Rosa platform (otherwise known as Centrino Pro or Centrino Duo) are now freely available somewhere or other on this virtual playground we call the Internet.

Originally, dozens of new systems were going to be announced the morning of May 9. While those announcements, and their requisite press releases, will still happen, just about every last cat is already out of the bag.

We previously clued you into leaks about systems from HP, Sony, and Lenovo, and over the last few days a new flood of information … Read more

An older Intel flash memory factory in New Mexico will be shut down later this year, and up to 1,000 people could be looking for work as a result.

The plant, one of two factories Intel operates in Rio Rancho, N.M., makes flash memory chips based on 135-nanometer manufacturing technology. Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy told InfoWorld that the company wants to make its flash memory division profitable, and cutting older technology from the ranks is one way to make that happen. Intel and Micron announced last week that they are sampling flash memory chips built using 50-nanometer manufacturing … Read more

It's hard to keep a tech secret these days. Some would say impossible, thanks to the army of blogs on the Internet looking to grab eyeballs with any bit of leaked information or speculation they can find.

While the average consumer may not be as excited about the May 9 release of the first wave of laptops with Intel's Santa Rosa platform as one would be about, say, a new video game console, the torrent of leaked specs and models appearing online are interesting, even if just because it's information you're not supposed to know.

Otherwise … Read more