Whitebooks: The Right Books?

Someone should write a book on the PC notebook market. In the history of computing, I wonder if there has ever been a market characterized by so few standards and so much customer confusion.

If notebooks were single people looking for a date, even eHarmony and its in-depth compatibility test couldn't come to the rescue. About the only thing today's notebooks have in common: They run on battery power

or electrical current. Everything else--battery packs, LCDs, keyboards and motherboards--comes in different shapes, sizes and configurations.

Pity the poor customer who uses an adapter for one model on another and ends up frying a machine (as I once did). Worse yet, pity the poor reseller who must bear the expense of stocking a slew of spare parts or shipping a client's computer to the manufacturer for repair.

But the funny thing about the notebook market is that it remains the fastest-growing segment of the PC industry. What's more, vendors reap fairly sizable profits from the millions of notebooks they sell worldwide.

Even so, Intel is looking to make some big changes. The $39 billion company, which tried for years to get systems builders to assemble custom-made notebooks--hoping the movement would do for portables what it did for desktops--is making an effort to give those builders what they've been asking for: standard building blocks.

At its recent solution provider summit in Scottsdale, Ariz. (where it rained and snowed--not a bad omen, we hope), Intel announced that it has been working hard to convince the industry's superpowers to manufacture standard notebook components. That would make it easier for systems builders to source parts, build laptops and support them, Intel says. It would also allow builders to compete against the likes of Dell much more effectively.

It may take some time for small businesses to get comfortable with the idea of custom notebooks. But if they're satisfied with their white-box desktops, it won't be a big leap to portables.

Bill Sui, who runs Intel's channel platform group, says the chipmaker has already brought China's Big Three notebook suppliers, Asus, Compal and Quanta, onboard for its standardization effort. Since those three supply 70 percent of the world's notebooks, most everyone else will follow their lead.

By the time you read this column, Intel will have slapped a fancy name on its standards push, dubbing it the Intel Interchangeability Initiative. One of the most exciting developments to hit the systems-builder market in years, III is also a big part of Intel's efforts to beef up its bottom line in 2006. The company has lost nearly 20 percent of its value and is desperately seeking ways to stimulate sales growth. Its efforts in the notebook space are long overdue.

"You can't have a guy in the basement saying, 'I created a standard,'" Sui says. And he's right. Now Intel has to convince all those basement-dwellers that building custom notebooks makes a lot of sense.

The VARBusiness trivia contest winner is Joe Spahn of Pentax Imaging. He identified the first Web browser as Mosaic, developed by Marc Andreesen while a student at the University of Illinois National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Your prize is on the way, Joe. Many of you thought the correct answer was the World Wide Web, developed by Tim Berners-Lee. Close, but no cigar.

This week's question: What was the first Intel PC chip, when was it introduced, and what was its operating speed? E-mail your answers, and feedback on Intel's custom-notebook effort, to rdemarzo@cmp.com.

Robert C. DeMarzo (rdemarzo@cmp.com) is vice president/publisher of VARBusiness and GovernmentVAR magazines.