Intel mobile roadmap promises Air for the masses

Intel promised Mac Airs for the masses today as it urged customers and companies to get over the economic crisis, ditch their old kit and stock up on new PCs. Given that there seems to be more fear than attendees stalking the halls at Cebit this year, it's hardly surprising that the vendor is spending as much energy hurling …

[Conor Turton]

So 1990's.

"Intel's mobile marketing director Karen Regis kicked off an update on the vendor's mobile roadmap by saying that 37 per cent of the installed base of PCs was over three years old, and that 38 per cent of installed PCs are desktops. This meant that users were excluded from rich content, she said, as well as stuck with flakey networking and security."

I could have sworn my 3 year old desktop was running a fully patched Vista, gigabit LAN and playing all my favourite FPS's at my LCD monitors native resolution with all detail maxed up to full. I'd love to know what rich content I'm supposedly missing that requires more than a X2 4800+ 2GB RAM, a nvidia 8800GT and 8Mbit broadband.

What Ms. Regis misses is the fact that even if you're a gamer, what was high end 2-3 years ago is more than enough now.

[Rob Beard]

3 yr old hardware

Hmmm, I like their comment about 3 year old hardware. One of my clients was given two IBM Thinkpads recently, they're about 3 years old with Intel Pentium M 2GHz CPUs, 1GB Ram and Intel Wireless. Are they saying that the quality of Intel products go down hill when they're 3 years old and they start to get flakey?

Hmmm, in that case I'll make my next purchase an AMD machine then.

Rob

[Frank]

@Connor Turton re. So 1990's

You're not supposed to analyse what they say, you're supposed to believe them and do what they want.

Stop acting like somebody who thinks and start saving Intel, buy, buy, buy!

[Glenn Gilbert]

Meh...

Hardware vendor wants everyone to upgrade their hardware...

Interesting that on his version of planet earth two thirds of his people throw away their machines before three years has passed. Back on the real planet earth and not the one in his head, it's nothing like that and people keep their machines for much longer.

He's not noticed, but the world's moved on from last year's excessive consumption into this year's frugality.

[TeeCee]

Re: So 1990's

I was in the same position until recently. Staring at my three year old build (by sheer coincidence also an X2 4800+, 2GB, 8800GT setup on 8Mbit broadband), itching to upgrade it and yet unable to come up with a remotely viable justification for spending the loot.

Then the wife, hurrying to get up from the computer desk to answer the phone (which wasn't actually ringing, natch), dodged an errant chair, caught a sleeve in the system unit and pulled it over to come crashing to the floor. Hey presto, a cast-iron excuse for hours of fun purchasing lovely new parts and putting them together as the mobo power supply circuitry chose to take this personally. Bonus feature, she didn't get to complain about all the time I spent doing it!

I think what intel need isn't a flashy roadmap showing desktop bound laptops but to give away free baggy sleeved pullovers, strategically place a few chairs and then send their chosen upgrade candidate an IM saying their car's being towed.....

[Daar Istia]

3 year old 8800GT

Impressive considering the 8800GT was released on October 29, 2007.

( http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3140 )

[Alan Lukaszewicz]

Mac Tablet?

Wouldn't a Mac Tablet be a nicer alternative?

[Trevor]

@Mac Tablet

...nicer alternative to what?

Actually, come to think of it...the old 386 notebook i was using for a paperweight is looking a little worn...