Intel unwraps new laptop brand

Centrino Pro range brings better remote management capabilities to mobile PCs

Intel has officially announced its Centrino Pro laptop brand that will bring many of the management capabilities of its vPro business platform to mobile PCs. Due later this quarter, the platform will also support Flash-based cache to boost hard disk performance.

Centrino Pro, codenamed Santa Rosa, brings to laptops similar capabilities as the Active Management Technology (AMT) in Intel vPro desktops. With this platform, administrators will be able to manage and protect laptops over Wi-Fi as well as a wired Ethernet connection, according to Intel.

“Intel Centrino Pro technology brings the best of our offering with Intel vPro technology and adds it right into our highly successful Intel Centrino brand for laptops,” said Mooly Eden, vice-president of Intel's Mobile Products Group.

AMT embeds management capabilities into the network adapter, allowing an administrator to reach into systems even if the PC is turned off or unable to boot the operating system. Many management vendors such as Altiris and Landesk have already added support for AMT into their suites since the technology was introduced last year.

However, for AMT to function a desktop must to be physically connected both to the network and a power source, which will not always be the case with laptops. Intel warned that certain capabilities may be restricted when a laptop is connected wirelessly, on battery power, sleeping, hibernating or powered off.

Centrino Pro laptops will be based on Intel's current crop of Core 2 Duo mobile processors, but will gain a new wireless adapter with support for the draft 802.11n specification. This is designed to enable Wi-Fi network connections to operate over greater distances, up to twice as far away from an access point as is currently possible, and support higher data rates than the 54Mbit/s of 802.11a or 802.11g.

The new platform will also enable laptops to fit Flash memory to speed hard disk performance by caching recent or regularly accessed files. Known as Turbo Memory, this will enable laptops to boot Windows up to 20 percent faster, Intel said.