Centrino, Viiv, et al.

Originally posted here, 04/23/06

I just read this article, and kinda chuckled to myself about how the journalist missed the point of Intel's platform branding in his rant. A lot of you may have seen or heard of Intel's Centrino or Viiv (pronounced "five"). I'm a service technician and a salesperson at a popular computer store in downtown Toronto, and I constantly get customers asking me for laptops with Centrino processors or wondering if Viiv computers are going to create a disconnect for media PC users who don't want to use Intel CPUs.

Here's the simple truth to it all: Centrino and Viiv (and AMD Live! and any other stupid brand name that isn't Core, Xeon, Pentium, Celeron, Turion, Opteron, Athlon, or Sempron) are just a set of requirements laid-out to define a platform. A Centrino laptop is a laptop that has an Intel Pentium M or Core CPU, an Intel chipset on the motherboard, and an Intel wireless adapter. A Viiv PC is a PC that has a dual-core Intel CPU, a specific Intel chipset on the motherboard that has certain integrated multimedia features (HD video decoders, 6-channel audio, etc...), an Intel ethernet controller, and Windows XP Media Center Edition.

Here's the interesting part: You can get all of these things in other laptops and desktops in better (faster, more efficient) configurations, and/or potentially at a lower cost. There's nothing particularly special about Centrino or Viiv computers other than the fact that they meet Intel's pre-defined requirements to perform a given set of functions. These brands are, realistically, not meant to redefine the PC hardware world, but rather to offer general consumers (i.e. not enthusiasts or professionals) a guarantee that their new computer will be able to perform certain functions. Want a laptop that'll be good on battery life, low on heat, and connect to any standard wireless network? Get a Centrino-certified laptop. Want a PC that you can put in your living room for recording TV, watching DVDs, listening to music, and playing games? Get a Viiv-certified PC.

Want a good PC that does all of this, is easily upgradeable, and gives you better bang for the buck? Contact me, and I'll custom-build you one ;)

A Disclaimer: I've neglected a few points in this rant, such as (needlessly) hardware-specific software and superficial 'hardware features' because they are, in the forseeable future anyway, trivial to achieving the intended realistic goals of these platforms. They are little more than glorified advertising/recruiting/entrapment tools that are made to be proprietry for the sole purpose of shepherding consumers into a mindset that will generate hollow brand loyalties and greater revenues for big corporations.