Is This Your Next Laptop 14/07/2004

Just a month after the official release of Intel’s Dothan processor and the company is already talking about its next generation mobile platform. Codenamed Sonoma, Intel has ambitious plans for the CPU, its chipset and Wi-Fi interface, which should be available some time in the second half of 2004.We were given a sneak preview of some of its potential uses at the Intel Developers Forum in Barcelona.Three concept devices were on display with the collective codename ‘Florence’. Rather than being machines that you will be able to buy in the future, they are product reference designs that aim to lure in potential manufacturers.

Intel seems to be placing a lot of emphasis on multimedia, with laptops beginning to act as the hub of the household’s entertainment set-up. The most innovative and exciting of the three was the hybrid machine, which combined elements from a desktop PC, a widescreen television, a Tablet PC and a laptop, creating an amalgam that’s set to appeal to home users. The hybrid ‘digital home’ entertainment machine, designed – as were all the machines we saw – by IDU in consultation with Intel, is intended to look like a flat panel television.

However, there’s still an emphasis on portability, and the unit came with a carrying handle built into the design. It had a 17-inch screen, a Bluetooth keyboard that could be removed or folded away and a Bluetooth remote control that was built into the unit.

Ticky Thakkar, Intel’s director of Mobile Platform Architecture, explains the thinking behind the unit: “we’re seeing today that a lot of consumers are using 17-inch laptops not only as a computer, but they’re also using them as an entertainment device: now they’re TVs. These machines are usually two inches thick. To excite consumers and get away from those kind of form factors, we developed something that had the same attributes, but with a different look.” Security features were also included in the concept. The biometric fingerprint scanners are not intended so much forsecurity as for ease of use. The idea is that the fingerprint sensors will change all the settings based on each user’s personal preferences. It will also log each user into the computer and anyone who’s unregistered won’t be able to access any features.

PORTABLE TELEVISION

“The unit is your TV, personal video recorder, computer, everything you need in the same box – and it delivers it wirelessly,” explains Thakkar. “Today, Windows Media Center 2004 requires a tuner, but Intel is working with an Intel-capital funded company in order to deliver television wirelessly. The satellite, aerial or cable is plugged into a box, which will then distribute the signal wirelessly to your home using 802.11g, so you don’t have to have an antenna sticking in.” The unit comes with Intel high definition audio, which means it can deliver digital Dolby 7.1 sound. It also provides Voice over IP. A built-in camera means you can use it for conference calling. The Field-Array microphones will pick up your voice no matter where you move to in the room and will cancel out peripheral noise. They do this by picking up your voice frequency and filtering out any other sounds. Thakkar expanded on the long-term theory behind ‘Florence’ when he said: “not all of these things will happen from day one, but these are some of the possibilities of here we see this class of system going. It’s first and foremost a consumer device.” But it’s not just consumer devices that Intel has big plans for. There were also two business machines on show. One dubbed the ‘office warrior model’ and the other nicknamed the ‘road warrior model’. Unsurprisingly, the latter was far smaller and lighter than the former, with a 12-inch InPlane Switching (IPS) screen. The ‘office warrior’ used a 15.4-inch widescreen panel and was designed to be ‘luggable’ rather than portable.

As with the consumer machine, both laptops came with Field Array microphones. These are certainly part of Intel’s vision for the future and this ties in with Voice over IP, another technology that Intel is pushing. Thakkar also expects that 3G cards will be built into laptops by the second half of 2005, with many of them including push emails similar to current Blackberry devices. Both office units had control panels built into the lid of their casing. These are rudimentary PDAs, that will allow users to access their emails and run certain programs without having to switch the laptop on. They will also provide PIM functions.

Wireless USB was a popular theme at the exhibition. Based on short range, low power Ultra Wideband wireless technology, it expected to take the place of USB 2.0 in the long term. It runs on USB 2.0 protocols and will provide 480Mbps connection speeds over a maximum distance of 10m.

In terms of how long we will have to wait to see these technologies, the expected release dates were all somewhat vague. The “second half of 2005” and the “end of 2005” were expressions we heard a lot during the exhibition. Ultra wideband cards and dongles should be arriving by the end of this year, however.