Intel: Centrino 2 Whitebooks Have Back-To-School Edge

"On back-to-school, our resellers will be ready for the end-of-July time frame because they can turn things around quicker. Our larger customers have bigger distribution chains. The channel has a little bit of an advantage here, in terms of time-to-market and hitting the back-to-school opportunity," said Bill Davidson, a marketing manager in Intel's North American channel organization.

Davidson, speaking after the main Centrino 2 launch proceedings held in San Francisco Monday, was addressing concerns that delays to Intel's next-generation mobile platform could narrow the window for whitebook builders to put together the latest Intel mobile packages in time for a retail rush that goes from late July to mid-September.

While more educational whitebook business might be done in the spring during the institutional procurement season, the late-summer consumer buying period is increasingly important to smaller notebook builders, an Intel spokesperson said following Davidson's remarks.

Intel had originally scheduled the release of the Centrino 2 platform, formerly codenamed Montevina, for late June. A technical issue with integrated graphics on the GM45 chipset caused the delay until mid-July. That problem is "in the rearview mirror," Davidson said Monday.

"As of tomorrow, you can get online and order a Centrino 2 system and they'll start rolling out at the end of July, beginning of August," he said.

A separate issue, an FCC certification hang-up with the WiMAX/WiFi card originally intended to launch along with the rest of Centrino 2, means that optional technology won't be available until later in the year, Davidson said.

If Davidson put a positive spin on the Montevina delays, one of his counterparts at rival chip maker Advanced Micro Devices wasn't so charitable.

"We can get notebooks out on time," said Pat Moorhead, a VP of marketing at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD, referring to the smaller company's launch of its Puma notebook platform in early June.

"Not that we hit every single one of our dates, but we sure try," he added, backtracking slightly before launching into the case for Puma in students' shoulder bags.

"We are ready for back-to-school. Timing-wise, price-wise and on integrated graphics. On the 3D side it's a whole lot more than just games. You're looking at Picasa, Google Earth, the Adobe suite. When you're talking about students, they need those apps," Moorhead said.

He said Intel's integrated graphics problems, issues which ultimately delayed the launch of Centrino 2, were unsurprising.

"It shows how challenging graphics and video is, particularly on integrated," Moorhead said.

Davidson, meanwhile, talked up the evolution of Intel's Common Building Blocks initiative for whitebook components. With the release of two mobile motherboards for the channel Monday as part of the Centrino 2 launch, Intel continues to simplify sourcing for smaller notebook builders, he said.

The two boards, the MGM45RM for consumer laptops and the MGM45WU for business systems, are the results of the Centrino 2 whitebook-specific project formerly codenamed Rich Creek 2. The business board, which supports both Core 2 Duo and Celeron processors, features the GM45 Express chipset for the Centrino 2 platform and the company's proprietary vPro technology for secure out-of-band system management across commercial notebook fleets.

Another feature on the MGM45WU board is Intel Turbo Memory 1.7, a technology that enables custom notebook builders to configure systems to launch specific applications quicker than they would in a default configuration.

"Turbo Memory is a 'pinning' application," Davidson explained. "You take a favorite application and make it launch faster every time you use it. So you would 'pin' [Microsoft] Word into Turbo Memory and every time you launch Word, it launches faster."

Davidson said whitebook builders could better serve business customers with different application needs across internal divisions given smaller companies' ability to do custom configurations that larger OEMs had trouble doing.

Rich Creek 2 kicked off officially Monday with two system builders, Seneca Data and Equus Computer Systems, and a distributor, ASI, in place as pilot partners. Davidson said in the coming weeks Intel would be building up its Centrino 2 whitebook program to include about 30 partners.

Asked if Intel is "accepting applications from system builders" for the Rich Creek 2 "fast follower group," Davidson grinned and said, "We are, we are."