Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[sgolds]

SemiconEng,

Then why do I have the feeling that if Centrino were an AMD product, instead of an intel one, then your opinion would be, that instead of a "Marketing Ploy", that it represented the greatest technology since the toaster?

Au contraire, despite the fact that I worked for 20 years as an engineer, I have a lot of respect for the power of marketing. I was complimenting Intel, I think they are a much better marketing company than AMD. I think the core Pentium processor in the Centrino chipset is a very good processor, generally equal to mobile Athlons and maybe slightly better because of the larger cache & low power usage. The WiFi is obsolete first generation, and the price for the whole package is way too high for my tastes. While I think the P4 concept is a cynical attempt to ripoff consumers with high clock rates, the Pentium-M is a solid piece of technology. Just overpriced, because Intel marketing is good enough to do that. I am steering my friends to mobile Athlon solutions, and saving them lots of bucks.

On 'stupid' consumers, I said: ...to be long Intel is faith in the stupidity of the typical consumer. I am not long in Intel, I do not think the consumer is stupid over time and AMD has a better roadmap to future computing. Remember that Lincoln saying that starts You can fool some of the people all of the time..., I'm sure you remember the rest. Intel marketing is great at finding those people that can be fooled and milking them as long as possible.

As I said, Intel is a much better marketing company than AMD. However, coming from an engineering background, perhaps I have a weakness for the company that tries to succeed with a better product line - while Pentium-M is very good, it represents the end of the x86-32 era. AMD has picked up the torch.