Intel Mobile VP/GM Mooley Eden Unplugged: Centrino Pro (out today) will 'rock'

On the one hand, Centrino Pro represents an aggregation of Intel mobile technologies. On the other, according to Intel's corporate vice president and general manager of Mobile Platforms Mooley Eden, is a disaggregation (or in his words, a "bifurcation").  For years, the Centrino brand has stood mostly for a one-size-fits-all bundle of Intel components (processor, chipset and wi-fi radio) that notebook manufacturers could toss into their notebooks in order to get a Centrino sticker (a sticker I've never been terribly fond of, here's why).

But as of today, the Centrino brand is taking a new turn. While it's still a bundle of technologies including Intel's Core 2 Duo processor and an Intel 802.11n-based WiFi radio, the bundle for business targeted systems will be slightly different than the bundle for consumer-oriented systems.  Whereas the business-bundle is more targeted at the needs of businesses who are always looking for ways to make systems more secure and manageable (particularly from remote locations), the consumer bundle will be more geared at the sorts of applications that consumers might be running on their mobile systems. For example, gaming and entertainment.

Earlier this year, under the "vPro" brand, Intel rolled out another bundle of technologies for business-class desktop systems (I had the complete coverage with video and screen shots here on the Testbed blog). With todays rollout of the Centrino Pro brand, Intel's Centrino brand has inherited the same out-of-band management capabilities associated with vPro on the desktop. Intel picked the historic Federal Reserve Building on Battery Street as the site for its announcement and it was quite an elaborate show. Not only did Eden lead the announcement with talk about where Centrino has been and where it was going, just about every known brand of notebook manufacturer from Lenovo to Asus was present with their Centrino Pro business class and/or consumer-class systems.

There was one uncomfortable moment during the presentation -- one where the demo Gods refused to cooperate. To prove the performance benefits of 802.11n over 802.11a, Intel attempted to stream Hi-Definition video to two laptops, each running one of the 802.11 WiFi standards. But even though 11n is supposed to be faster, the HiDef video was just as choppy as the streaming being pumped over the 11a network. Anyway, just before Eden took the stage, I was able to rope him in for a video interview about today's announcement. Here's that video: