by: Glenn Murray
Is the futuristic world of connecting to the Internet from anywhere already upon us, or is Centrino little more than a great Intel marketing campaign?
The name “Centrino” is Intel lingo meaning your notebook possesses 3 specific qualities: It’s a Pentium-M, of the Intel 855 chipset family, and it has a Wi-Fi module.
Simple! If you’re a geek…
To the rest of us, “Centrino” means you can connect to the Internet without wires. But there’s a catch… you can only do this from designated hotspots. Centrino also means slimmer, lighter notebooks with longer battery life (4, 5, even up to 6 hrs!!!). That’s roughly an hour longer than top non-Centrino notebooks. In fact, it’s argued that the longer battery life is the really big advancement – the wireless hotspot technology has been around for years.
Intel designed the new Pentium M processor from scratch just for notebooks. In geek-speak, it delivers better performance at a lower clock speed and draws less power. In plain English, that means it’s better!!! That’s not to say it’ll be faster than the latest big laptops and desktops… It’s the combination of slim and speedy that’s unique about Centrino.
Ultimately, like any new technology, Centrino and its hotspots will probably take a while to catch on. I suspect that if you buy one now, rather than spending hours online in the local park, you’ll spend hours looking for hotspots, and even more hours regretting your early purchase as the latest and greatest technologies keep rolling out!
Whatever the case, one thing is for certain… notebook sales-people now have one more family of options to bamboozle us with!
NOTE: There are 450 Wi-Fi hotspots in Australia. Click here to see if there are any near you (http://intel.jiwire.com/hot-spot-directory-browse-by-state.htm?countryid16).