Intel's Centrino launch brings mixed reactions

The launch of Intel's latest mobile platform has been met with a mixed reaction from both notebook vendors and IT managers.

Centrino Pro, which consists of an upgraded processor, chipset and radio, was launched in the City of London on Wednesday. The mobile platform should enable PC vendors to create devices with greater performance and longer battery life. Intel says that 230 notebook models from a range of vendors will be based on either Centrino Pro or Centrino Duo.

HP is one of the more optimistic vendors, announcing five additional notebooks in its enterprise portfolio on the same day as Intel's launch. All five will be built on the Centrino Pro platform and released between May and August this year.

Steve Gales, HP's business development manager for mobility, said: "Notebooks have traditionally been more difficult to manage. Centrino Pro adds desktop manageability to the notebook platform." Gales added that he thought Centrino Pro would add an average of 30 minutes to battery life, because of a range of power-saving features.

Lenovo is also keen to build Centrino Pro into its notebooks, and is bringing out two ThinkPad widescreen notebooks — the X61 and R61 — which will be based on the mobile platform at the end of May. Its business development manager, Daniel Kiernan, said the X61 would boast around eight and a half hours of battery life, with a 15 to 20 percent increase in performance.

But Panasonic was more cautious. It will bring out just one Centrino Pro notebook — the CF52 model — which has an estimated release date of sometime in September.

Engineering manager John Harris said that the management capabilities of Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT) will "give customers lots of opportunities", and he added that Intel's Turbo Memory — which is an optional extra for PC vendors — could provide significantly better performance. But, on the prospect of producing further Centrino Pro models, he said: "We want to test the water. We may extend our executive range."

The online vendor, Asus.com, which was lined up to demonstrate its Centrino Pro notebooks at Intel's London launch, did not turn up.

Some visitors were underwhelmed with the launch. One attendee, who is employed within the mobility team of a global drinks manufacturer, and who asked not to be named, said: "It's difficult to realise the difference [compared to the original Centrino], in terms of what will make people decide to buy." He said that his company was likely to purchase Centrino Pro-based devices, but only as part of a normal upgrade cycle. When asked whether there was a feature of Centrino Pro which appealed to him, he said: "Not particularly, to be honest."

Matthias Knoefel, a pricing specialist at analysts Context, which advises corporates on their IT strategies, said: "It will be interesting to see when corporate buyers will move over to the platform. The security features need to be tested in different cases. There is big potential for it."

Knoefel said the manageability aspects of Centrino Pro could appeal to companies with many offsite users. "If it works according to the claims, there could be a significant improvement for IT managers," the analyst said.

Neil Berriman, the proprietor of MLL Telecom, which supplies IT services to the education sector, also flagged up the manageability plus-points of Centrino Pro: "Kids have the ability to screw up IT suites. To be able to do something about it, that has some advantages. It's good, knowing what's hanging off the end of the network."

But Berriman questioned the significance of the claimed power savings, saying it wouldn't make much difference to total power usage. He also said that Intel's security tools were only a small part of the security jigsaw for a public-sector organisation. He added that the price needed to be right for the education sector to demand the devices. "In the early days, it might be quite expensive," he said.

Wholesale prices, plus technical details on Centrino Pro, can be found in ZDNet UK's lowdown on the Santa Rosa platform.