Next Intel bundle frontier: Home

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will continue to expand in capabilities.

"We will start seeing WiMax getting integrated into notebooks at the end of '06 and '07," said Mooly Eden, vice president of the mobility group at Intel. "We are looking at other technologies, like UWB," or ultra wideband.

WiMax is a long-range radio technology that allows a notebook to connect to the Internet via a base station several miles away. WiMax is expected to make it cheaper for access providers to set up national wireless data networks. The technology isn't incorporated now because the infrastructure doesn't exist in the outside world.

By contrast, UWB lets consumers swap large files, like movies, rapidly over a few meters. Notebook makers can stick a UWB chip into notebooks now, but the technology likely won't take off until it can be integrated without much additional cost into existing chipsets, Eden said.

Standard wireless access will also become pervasive.

"We will have 100 percent attach rate with Wi-Fi" in the relatively near future, Eden said.

With the latest crop of notebooks, Intel and others will promote laptops as portable voice over Internet Protocol phones. "Wireless VoIP is a very significant development in the industry," said Bill Rossi, vice president of the wireless-networking business unit at Cisco Systems. Cisco, one of the larger proponents of VoIP, recently came out with a third version of a compatibility specification so notebooks can more easily connect to its equipment.

Along with promoting different applications for wireless notebooks, Intel will also continue to improve its notebook silicon. Next year, the company will introduce Napa, a new bundle of notebook chips to replace the Sonoma-Centrino bundle that came out today. Napa will include a dual-core chip, code-named Yonah, that will provide more performance but consume about the same amount of energy.