Intel says buy a notebook for Christmas

ACTIVE SPINNING AGENTS (ASAs) at the Intel Corporation sent out a cheery missive last Friday night advising you to get you or your loved one a Centrino notebook for the "festive season".

The press release, dubbed: "'Tis the Season for Notebook PCs" said that notebooks are becoming as popular as TVs, and technology gifts are certainly "top of mind with holiday gift givers". Intel further said that notebooks are morphing into all purpose entertainment devices you can take anywhere, with "features such as widescreens, TV tuners, personal video recording capabilities and remote controls".

Holiday shoppers can get great deals on laptops from firms such as CompUSA and Best Buy, it appears.

But we know for a fact that Intel and some of its notebook partners are set to introduce Sonoma based machines in Japan early in January and then roll 'em out worldwide.

We asked a senior notebook ASA at Intel whether she thought our INQ readers should buy notebooks now, wait for Sonoma, or put off spending money on notebooks until the year after.

"Nice try," she said. "There's no bad time to buy a Centrino notebook".

Just in case you're confuzzled, Alviso is part of the Sonoma "platform". Sonoma is a Dothan with a 533MHz front side bus and includes an Alviso chipset and a/b/g wireless. You can find out more about all this by doing a search on Sonoma on our search engine. And if you want to know what's happening on the notebook front, just carry on reading. µ