Intel keynote promises more of the same

ANAND CHANDRASEKHAR, SENIOR VP of Intel spoke about how the internet is becoming more and more personal and the devices need to grow into that space. He had a prototype of a ultra-small form factor PC which was slightly larger than the OQO that he expects to see in the market early next year. He then spoke about VIIV, which we have had some fun with at the launch last year.

There was a large focus on the VIIV platform and the various partnerships they have announced. I still fail to see how the VIIV platform relates to the software - all of the partnerships are software based and unless an AMD chip is explicitly locked out you should get the same results.

Anand then brought up Team 3D to talk about the Core 2 Duo, and they showed a quad core system running in a quad core optimized environment. The quad cores will be available soon, according to Anand. He also showed off some Sony VIAO laptops with Core 2 Duo processors.

The next focus in the keynote was a VIIV enabled laptop that will allow you to stream video over the internet using a Slingbox. Imagine my surprise. All this time I thought it was the Slingbox that permitted the video streaming. Go figure.

WiMAX was also touched on which promises "four times the bandwidth at up to one-tenth the cost" according to Sprint.

In the spirit of tech demonstrations going wrong, as happened earlier at the Microsoft keynote, the ultra-small form factor PC would not run any video and the keynote ground to a halt as a tech worked feverishly on stage to get the Asus unit working.

Finally, Intel introduced Volkswagen which had a prototype computer installed in a car onstage which allows streaming from the head unit to the video screens in the head rests. Each screen can show different streams, and the audio is broadcast wirelessly to headsets. The interface is managed from the head unit. The Ultra-Mobile PC made a reappearance at this point which connected to the head unit and allowed for wireless streaming of content from the internet. µ