The Pentium 4 will also move to notebooks soon, said Anand Chandrasekher, vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobile Platforms Group, who showed off a Pentium 4 notebook decoding high-definition television streams. The Pentium 4 mobile chips will also feature an enhanced version of SpeedStep, which saves energy by slowing down the processor when unplugged and offers a deeper sleep mode. A number of PC makers next week will announce new, high-end notebooks based on the Pentium 4-M chips. Among them will be Dell, which is expected to announce a Pentium 4-M machine in its Inspiron 8200 notebook line. Compaq Computer is also expected to announce a new Presario with the chip. Meanwhile, sources anticipate that Toshiba will launch several new computers, including a Satellite notebook, with the new chip. Gateway and IBM are likely to launch their Pentium 4-M notebooks at a later date. Most PC makers will introduce Pentium 4-M notebooks at the high end of their lines. They will likely include several other high-end features with the notebooks, which should carry a price tag of about $2,000 (about £1,400). Buyers should expect to see, for example, notebooks with 15-inch screens, hard drives up to 60GB, combination CD-RW/DVD drives and high-end graphics cards, a Compaq executive said. As previously reported, the new Pentium 4-M chips will run at 1.6GHz and 1.7GHz. Intel, sources said, also plans to add 1.5GHz and possibly 1.4GHz Pentium 4-M chips in late April. These chips will be priced lower than the new 1.6GHz and 1.7GHz processors, allowing PC makers to offer Pentium 4-M notebooks closer to the $1,500 mark, sources said. In the first half of 2003, the company will then follow up with Banias, a low-power notebook chip for ultrathin notebooks being designed in Israel, and a companion chipset called Odem. Pentium 4 and Banias will coexist next year, but the future will belong to the new chip, said Chandrasekher. "Over time, we do anticipate that the notebook market will transition to the Banias class of processor," he said. On the wireless watch
Intel will also make a continued push into the cell phone arena with "wireless Internet on a chip" processors for cell phones. The chips will combine a microprocessor, communications functions and memory -- all the basic necessary chips for a cell phone. Integrated processors generally reduce manufacturing costs and power consumption. Intel said it has developed an integrated chip for so-called 2.5G phones and a communications chip for 3G phones in its labs. Along with manufacturing components, Intel has formed a developer network to recruit software publishers to its technology and away from Texas Instruments, its main competitor in this field. "If the cell phone continues to be voice-only, Intel has no base in the cell phone market," said Tony Sica, vice president of Intel's Wireless Communications and Computing Group. "If the industry is successful in providing data services, we will win." Some application developers showing off forthcoming wares this week include Picsel Technologies, which has created a browser that lets handhelds display complete Web pages and video images. Manufacturers will release phones containing the company's application in the fourth quarter, said Ali Adnan, a customer representative for Picsel. Samsung and NEC are two of the larger companies discussing deals with the company, he added. Separately, Microsoft and Intel said on Wednesday that Microsoft has optimised Windows CE.Net to run on Intel's XScale chips. News.com's John G. Spooner contributed to this report.
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