AMD, Intel to make mighty notebook racket at CeBIT

WE WON'T BE in any danger of seeing a wooden prototype from Ericsson at CeBIT this year because the firm is saving its money for a different set of prototypes shows. Just a few years ago, Ericsson had the whole of the world's press in a veritable tizz when it showed off a GPRS/G3 device that turned out to be a wooden prototype.

Adobe won't be there either. It had half its stand built before it decided that it couldn't be bothered with the mammoth show, held in Hannover, Germany, year after year after year.

But while these two companies are shoving CeBIT into touch, AMD and Intel are likely to use the show to introduce their respective notebook technologies.

AMD will introduce its "thin and light" XP-M while Intel has sent me a tin-coloured heart, obviously thinking that's what I need. (I've got courage and a brain - obviously).

We expect Intel to make an absolute beanfest of its launch of Centrino tomorrow.

What else is happening?

Well Microsoft has got a mighty Smart Display tent between Halles 17/18 and will introduce its "Mira" wireless terminals that you can tote round your house and that cost a pretty pfennig.

The main focus of interest will be the Hardware Halles, where something like 640 Taiwanese companies will battle it out, confidently hoping that people will start buying kit again this year, or maybe next year.

The Greater Graphzilla and the Lesser Graphzilla will also be battling away to show us that we all need to dish out hundreds of dollars to display the latest version of our wordprocessors.

And the big tin men will be there as well - HP is expected to show OpenVMS booting on the Itanium, while Sun Microsystems will show off lots of stuff but we'll give its booth a miss.

And the mighty Munchner Bier Halle will see a load of computer executives making absolute toasties of themselves again, even though it's under new management... µ

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