Centrino 2 gets an outing but stays under wraps

Without giving much away, Maloney said the future was about Web 2.0, about “socialisation”.

Up until now a lack of processing power and decent battery life have not enabled mobile use of the web on a PC in a meaningful way, Maloney said. And the networks we’re all used to just don’t have the bandwidth. We still haven’t got all these things but will have soon. Once Centrino 2 is fixed and out the door and once the world is Wimaxed up, naturally.

Maloney was buoyed by the announcement this morning that the Taiwanese government is putting its money where its mouth is with an attempt to Wimax up Taipei. Intel has a memorandum of understanding with the Taiwanese government to fill the ether with data and the government here said it has spent some $200 million promoting and implementing use of the technology.

Maloney showed a video from Taiwan's minister of Economic Affairs Chii-ming Yiin, who said he thought that Wimax represents the next big growth opportunity for Taiwan's ITC industry, with local companies beavering away on Wimax kit for export.

Maloney's keynote wandered across the mobile landscape pausing briefly in the desktop arena long enough to announce the launch of the firm's Series 4 chipsets, P45, G45, and P43 and G43. He reminded us that it was on this very stage last year that the 3 Series was introduced with the support of loads of manufacturers.

After Atom what did Maloney have left? Well Nehalem, of course, the next desktop chip to keep Intel where it likes to be: "We're hard-core committed to staying out there getting faster and faster," balonied Maloney. Nehalem will come along "in the not-too-distant future," he promised – again.

A few words on SSDs: great for ruggedness and speed, "An interesting extension to the disk drive industry".

Asustek's Atom-powered (W)Eeeebox – "neat gyroscopic interface" and the reason we need all these different processing products? To keep all our digital photos and HD videos in order: "How many gigabytes for your life?"

And the wrap: "The more we innovate and bring consumers into the industry, the better we can bridge the digital divide."

"The future is brighter than ever," beamed Maloney in conclusion. Mind you, the note on the bottom of the Centrino 2 slide read: "All dates, plans, features are preliminary and subject to change without notice." Quite. µ